LECTURE 12Case Studies in Information Networks:Part 2

Today’s Plan

1. Club Nexus2. Related Work3. Implications for Design4. Final Papers

Findings…

Look Familiar?

Findings Cont’d…

Club Nexus shows evidence of: Clustering & Cliques Bridges – ‘weak ties’

‘Betweenness’ Homophily Similarity Drops with Network

Distance

Uh, What?

Figure 4: Average fraction of users with a common trait (year, undergraduate or graduate status, etc.) as a function of the distance from a user having that trait. The plot is truncated at eight hops because less

than .03% of the pairs are separated by more than eight hops.

Pros…

Surprise! Online = Offline! Applied Theory in an Actual Social

Network Rarity Oft-Cited …

…and Cons.

Messy, Self-Report Data Questionable Methods

Choices Personality ‘Stereotypes’?! Stanford?!

Small World Effect

How do people use information to search in a network?

Lada Adamic and Eytan Adar. “How to search a social network”. Social Networks Volume 27, Issue 3, July 2005, Pages 187-203

Implications for Design

Some stable patterns of behavior are difficult to change.

What are the sound assumptions about network of a given structure?

Identifying influential users What information is exposed to the

network? Social network analysis as a tool for

users.

Privacy

How do social networks influence privacy, perceptions of privacy?

Stutzman, F. (2006, April). An evaluation of identity-sharing behavior in social networkcommunities. Paper presented at the iDMAa and IMS Code Conference, Oxford, Ohio.

Closing in on Paper Topics

Nuts and Bolts

25 – 35 Pages 30% of your grade Due May 15th

Picking a Topic

Scope Narrowly! Places to start:

Pick a topic from class you are interested in Pick a particular case study of interest Pick a particular group or community of

interest

Research Strategies

Getting Started: Find a paper you love, expand from there. Find a paper you hate, expand from there. Find two papers that disagree, explore the

issues. Find a paper you can apply to another

domain.

Next Week

Diffusion of Innovations

or

Everything Malcolm Gladwell wanted you to think he figured

out on his own.