Group items tagged

Yahoo study on social reactions to different news stories.

Scholars, advertisers and political activists see massive online social networks as a representation of social interactions that can be used to study the propagation of ideas, social bond dynamics and viral marketing, among others. But the linked structures of social networks do not reveal actual interactions among people. Scarcity of attention and the daily rhythms of life and work makes people default to interacting with those few that matter and that reciprocate their attention. A study of social interactions within Twitter reveals that the driver of usage is a sparse and hidden network of connections underlying the "declared" set of friends and followers.

"Understanding the ways the social graph changes and influences decision making is something marketers and scientists are frantically trying to figure out. According to a new study out of MIT, people are more likely to start new behaviors when they're recommended by small clusters of people they know well. This may not sound intensely groundbreaking, but it runs counter to the decades-long assumptions social scientists have been making."

Amazing study on how Facebook or similar sns data can be used to predict social security numbers.

"Good news for worried parents: All those hours their teenagers spend socializing on the Internet are not a bad thing, according to a new study by the MacArthur Foundation. "

Basic guide to Twitter, why you'd want to use it, how to use it, etc. Created for businesses so there's case studies and other resources for business.

From Wired: case study of how to be a queen of self-promotion.

report of a study on use of Facebook

The following interview with Henry Jenkins (co-director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT) and danah boyd (PhD student at the School of Information, University of California-Berkeley) was conducted via email by Sarah Wright of the MIT News O

"Study finds political parties use Twitter differently, but says Democrats' messages are more honest.

A great case study of why many of those sites that claim to measure your popularity are meaningless.

"This paper explores key issues people experience managing personal boundaries within and across social technologies. We look in particular at email and online social networks. We offer a theoretical framework for understanding the errors in assumptions about the singularity of identity that are currently inscribed into the sharing models of social technology systems. Through a questionnaire study we examine how people facet their identities and their lives, and how these facets are expressed through use of technology. We found for more mature users family was an extremely important context for sharing online, and that email was still a preferred form of communication for private sharing across facets of life. Single, working men had the highest level of incompatible facets, and a higher level of facet incompatibility was correlated with increased worry about sharing in the context of social networks."

A recent analysis of Twitter content found that local governments in Virginia are mainly ignoring the popular microblogging website. The research study showed that only 17% of county, city and town governments had Twitter accounts. Tweets averaged at around one per day, and only five of the accounts had more than 1000 followers.

Discussion of whether it is appropriate for a reporter to quote material from tweets in a story, case study from mlive.com

by Laura Garton, Caroline Haythornthwaite, and Barry Wellman

"Colleges, entrepreneurs, and publishers, all drawn by the buzz of social media, are competing to market software that makes sharing class notes or collaborating on calculus problems as simple as updating your Facebook status."