IS 291C Week 7 Class Notes

 

how do we understand society?

structural approaches

critiques of approaches

apply to how we understand networks and technology

 

connectivity at the margins – projects in Australia

 

basic arguments within network theory and social networks

 

in sociology a full yr of courses on social networks

 

internet as public sphere – what’s still relevant how have the arguments evolved or devolved into?

 

MY PAPER ANALYSIS IN CLASS

how do we understand the diff processes of information diffusion

everything is subject to misappropriateion

small scale, macro scale

how what gets lost is more meaningful

 

just because it’s faster, doen’t mean it’s causes production

 

information and power how it’s transmitted and how it affects power

manuel castells and his ills

network power

 

 

burrell – where the internet is reinvented in Ghana has been completely subverted

process of subversion not feasible for

amplifies that which already existed

neither oppositional nor subordination

ppl doing what hey do with what they have available to them

 

compare two models of diffusion and bring up the social issues and the framing issues

this theme is constant

how does this play out in two cases

and what do we take from that

 

are the case studies representative of what social networks are? address that criticism

 

try to narrow it; also can do the concept without doing the fractal idea

 

what will be the argument?

 

case studies reveal the hypocrisy of sthg

 

 

unpack the values

elements of ambivalence

analysis of the different voices and discourses around certain technology; what this means for digit TKTK (diplomacy)

Alec Ross, Jared Cohen

 

Schoenberg and big data

big data—privileged data sets

 

Robin Boast: Digitality

proper home for digitality is telecommunications

alternative in computation analogue

binary as the governing paradigm of computation is relatively recent

the digital world has been taken hostage by models of storage and the archive

 

subjective historical narrative attempting to reclaim the digital as sthg more performative

the digital world can be and shud be a place that empowers dynamic real-time conversational experiences

his reading of history: that makes the arg that there in computation and idea of using computers to solve comp complex tasks, we forgot at the core of the digital is every object being a copy—actual multiple ontology idea

relationship between turnbull, verran. claims that the core of digital itself

there’s another set of histories assoc with technology (doug englebart) not interested in enlightenment archival model but in the more playful ed/psych model of thrying to engage computers as communication (influenced by piaget, pappert)

constructionist pedagogy – going through experience to understand

 

he hates standards and metadata

 

dislikes focus on information retrieval

object is never rendered in the same way

no such thing as a persistent object and persistent knowledge

 

the nature of the digital object (Johanna works on this)

 

Networks and Network Analyses

what’s a social network? a link and two nodes; lines express relations/links

what’s carried through those links not always the same

what are examples of diff types of social networks?

cities, church groups,

you have to think abt the level of scale by which you understand the TK in your social network

 

granovetter: finding a job; economic connections

how do we understand the value of a link between two nodes and

 

if you look at the overall structure, based on the structure, there are some critical nodes, depending o the purpose of the network (gatekeeper)

tap into disparate sources of information/different hubs

doesn’t nec connect to reliability and the strength of a tie

strong tie: the more tight-knit, the more redundant, so fewer unique possibilities

weak tie:

kickstarter as a bridge: Ramesh says it disputes this model

 

Milgram: psychologist interested in the idea to measure how relations in networks work (postcard experiment)

sociologists long interested in: what is the value of social structure n impacting society and culture

how deterministic is structure on society?

network sociologists long interested in mapping out the very structure of society

one model: ego centered network

various types of surveys and visualizations (linkedin)

extract data from connections that create opportunity to monetize

 

bonding TKTKs

technology

paul baron packet switching

proves granovetter talks abt in a social sense

simulates a telecom system that reduces risk of attack—make it completely redundant

like a fishnet

if you take out one node, can still get there to send your message

no bridges that could be taken out

granovetter: interconnected robust group of ppl

 

seth: internet doesn’t have weak tie/strong tie distinction

 

 

Goodwin – social movements and social network theory – doesn’t really apply

instrumentalism locates us in network of power functions

structure isn’t everything: action and reaction and

more voice and attn. to the inequality of flows and cxns

 

amount of agency

networks are a nice way for us to understand structure

if you can place media where it’s not the center of things, you’re getting somewhere

 

 

 

granovetter: Moreno: who shall survive

founder of sociometry

networks on kinship—anthropology

 

19402

mathematical ideas to talk about it in the 40s

represent a social network by 1s and 0s in a matrix. lends itself to math manipulation

 

1950s mathematics

random graphs deal with networks in an abstract way

in random graphs, any node can reach other through a short path

real networks have clustering, then it becomes harder than random gaph to reach ppl in other clusters—longer path

 

Milgram: the small world problem

strangers who unexpectedly discover they share an acquaintance

 

obedience experiment to gain insight into nazi conformity

 

MT: I wonder if six degrees of separation is still accurate given new media. is it more or less?

 

MT:mi wonder what a comparison of the chain letter w postcards versus the email chain letters would look like

also, my experiment w youtube

 

 

this study was related to another set of studies

Harrison White: pioneer in study of social networks

 

 

information flow – how many of your friends know each other

ego centric network density

 

Rappaport your strong ties know the same ppl you know

alienation reconsidered – weak social attachments in society

 

could reach across social networks using their weak ties

 

Duncan Watts

highly clustered networks and rewired 1-2 percent randomly then the path link decreases very dramatically

in real life, ppl have acquaintances

 

lateral connectivity at the margins

Sawhney & Suri

weak ties, or sthg completely different? the argument is think about the larger structure in which it’s embedded. telecom infrastructures start at the top and drift to the lateral regiona

access to resources

projects are facilitating strong tied communication networks within communities

by building technology networks and infrastructures by for and with local communities (ontologies; who does what? all social ?s around social infrastructure)

 

horizontal weak ties ideas is not true in reality

what happens when we rewire things in a local sense?

negotiated and starts w communities

fits in to james cary’s ritual communication

what’s made possible when one looks at laterality

spaces opened up for community-driven models of ontology, TKTK

 

in the instrumental and constructivist space

glance at it again for next week

 

very briefly talk abt the virtual sphere piece

then my stuff