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Ronda Wery

apophenia: Would the real social network please stand up? - 0 views

  • All too frequently, someone makes a comment about how a large number of Facebook Friends must mean a high degree of social capital. Or how we can determine who is closest to who by measuring their email messages. Or that the Dunbar number can explain the average number of Facebook friends. These are just three examples of how people mistakenly assume that 1) any social network that can be boiled down to a graph can be compared and 2) any theory of social networks is transitive to any graph representing connections between people. Such mistaken views result in broad misinterpretations of social networks and social network sites. Yet, time and time again, I hear problematic assumptions so let me start with some claims: Not all social networks are the same. You cannot assume network transitivity. You cannot assume that properties that hold for one network apply to other networks. To address this, I want to begin by mapping out three distinct ways of modeling a social network. These are not the only ways of modeling a social network, but they are three common ways that are often collapsed in public discourse.
  • Sociological "personal" networks. Sociologists have been working hard to measure people's personal networks and much of the theory of social networks stems from analysis done on these networks.
  • Most sociological theory stems from analyses of these personal networks. Social capital, weak ties, homophily, ... all of those theories you've heard about are based on personal networks. Given that these are typically measured by eliciting people's understandings of certain categories (e.g., "friend"), there's a strong overlap between everyday language around social networks and the categories being measured.
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  • rticulated social networks are the social networks that you intentionally list. In some senses, this is what sociologists are eliciting, but people also articulate their social networks for other purposes. Address books and buddy lists are articulated social networks. So too are invitation lists. Most recently, this practice took a twist with the rise of social network sites that invite you to PUBLICLY articulate your social network. At this point, I would hope that most of us would realize that Friends != friends. In other words, who you connect to on Facebook or MySpace or Twitter is not the same list of people that you would say constitute your closest and dearest. The practice of publicly articulating one's social network can be quite fraught because there are social costs to the process of public articulation. Issues of reciprocity emerge and people find themselves doing a lot of face-work to navigate the sticky nature of having to account for their social relations in a publicly accountable way
  • These networks are NOT the same. Your mother may play a significant role in your personal network but, behaviorally, your strongest tie might be the person who works in the cube next to you. And neither of these folks might be links on your Facebook for any number of reasons.
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    All too frequently, someone makes a comment about how a large number of Facebook Friends must mean a high degree of social capital. Or how we can determine who is closest to who by measuring their email messages. Or that the Dunbar number can explain the average number of Facebook friends. These are just three examples of how people mistakenly assume that 1) any social network that can be boiled down to a graph can be compared and 2) any theory of social networks is transitive to any graph representing connections between people. Such mistaken views result in broad misinterpretations of social networks and social network sites. Yet, time and time again, I hear problematic assumptions so let me start with some claims: 1. Not all social networks are the same. 2. You cannot assume network transitivity. 3. You cannot assume that properties that hold for one network apply to other networks. To address this, I want to begin by mapping out three distinct ways of modeling a social network. These are not the only ways of modeling a social network, but they are three common ways that are often collapsed in public discourse.
Ronda Wery

Here's a Free PowerPoint Template & How I Made It - The Rapid eLearning Blog - 0 views

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    Here's a Free PowerPoint Template & How I Made It
Ronda Wery

Rapid E-Learning 101 - The Rapid eLearning Blog - 0 views

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    Rapid elearning is about getting the right information to people at the right time. It's more than the tools. It's about empowering people with the knowledge that they need to operate at the speed of business.
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