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Deana Brown
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Kar-Hai Chu |
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Jonathan Coleman |
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Jessie Connell |
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Jana Diesner |
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Irene Eleta Mogollon |
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Alex Garnett |
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Scott Golder |
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Delicia Greene |
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Tim Hale |
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Sudheendra Hangal |
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Zack Hayat |
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Jessica Hullman |
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Surya Kallumadi |
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Jen Kayahara |
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Jes Koepfler |
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Jess Kropczynski |
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Eden Litt |
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Owen Livermore |
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Claudia Lopez Moncada
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Randy Lynn |
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Christopher Mascaro |
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"Mo" Guang Ying Mo |
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Sean Munson |
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Katy Pearce |
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Tamara Peyton |
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Mary Beth Ray |
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Candice Roberts |
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Dana Rotman |
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Paul Russo |
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Jen Schradie |
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Victoria Schwanda |
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Elizabeth Schwarz |
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Lauren Senesac |
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David Sparks |
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Casey Spruill |
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Liz Thiry |
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Jessica Vitak |
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Will Youmans |
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Alyson Young |
Participant Research
Jonathan Coleman My research interests in social networks at this point are still quite broad, though I have a strong interest in health and healthcare delivery, possibly involving the mining of websites like "patientslikeme.com". This coming fall I will begin a project looking at the relationship between and among physician practices and patients and the impact on cost and quality of care. I hope to integrate this research with my interest in online communities.
Jessie Connell I am a PhD student in Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota. My research focuses on how people use information and communications technologies (ICTs) in their family roles. I currently work on the Parenting 2.0 research project at the University of Minnesota, which aims to gain a better understanding of the ways in which, and the reasons that parents use technology. We hope to determine some of the processes that take place that impact parent learning online, and the outcomes of parents' use of technology.
I am particularly interested in how ICTs and online social networks influence how family members communicate with each other and how this impacts family relationships, particularly the parent-child relationship. I wrote my master's thesis on how college students use ICTs to communicate with their parents. I am also interested in how ICTs and online social networks can be used as effective tools for engaging parents in evidence-based parenting resources, and how evidence-based parenting resources can be delivered online.
Irene Eleta Mogollon Access to information in different languages has been the pivotal center of my research interests and professional development; from translation, to cross-lingual search and multilingual digital libraries, to my recent work for the Ph.D. on multilingual social tagging of museums' image collections. Now that I am starting my dissertation proposal, I would like to research how people overcome language barriers in social networks when sharing information and what tools or skills they are using to achieve it.
In a critical moment, when the Internet is being shaped by national governments' laws and Internet companies that base their services on geolocation, it is very important to develop channels of communication across languages and national borders for the innovation, transparency, and accountability needed to solve global problems. Social networks and social media have an enormous potential for disseminating ideas across borders and languages, only if we are able to understand which designs, tools, and sociolinguistic factors facilitate such information flows.
Delicia Greene My current research interests are rooted in my professional experiences as a former school librarian and secondary English educator. My current research project entitled, Reading as a Communal Practice: Examining the Reading Engagements of Young Adults Through the Use of Virtual Communities/ Social Networking Sites explores how young adults communicate in virtual communities for the purposes of reading. More specifically, my research interests explores the literacy practices and social factors present in an online Twitter Book Club.
My research project is driven by the following research questions:
Q1: What literacy practices are constructed in an online social networking book club? Q2. What social factors are constructed in an online book club? Q3. How might certain identity markers, such as race and gender shape discourse in an online book club? Q4. How might the role of facilitator (librarian/teacher) influence inquiry among members (students)?
By asking the above questions, I am hoping that it informs the following overarching questions: What factors create a sense of community in an online space? In what ways does sense of community influence one’s level of engagement in an online space? How might trust be gained in an online space among people that may not know each other personally?
Tim Hale New information and communication technologies (ICTs) are rapidly transforming how people find and share health information, communicate with health care providers, and connect with other patients for social support. For example, the Internet is now the first source of health information for most people and social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) are increasingly being utilized by public health agencies to disseminate health information and promote healthy behaviors. My research goals are to investigate how this emerging system of health communication, electronic health records, and Internet-related technologies (eHealth) are transforming the health care system, patient-provider interactions, and is incorporated into people's daily health-promoting behaviors.
Unfortunately, despite the tremendous potential of eHealth, it is likely that people will not benefit equally from this new health communication and information environment. Socially disadvantaged groups continue to experience inequalities in technology access. This “digital divide” may contribute to persistent social inequalities in access to health information and “knowledge gaps” about health risks and medical treatments. Even among groups with similar levels of access to technology, social inequalities contribute to “digital inequalities” in skills, attitudes, and use of ICTs. As a result, people may not benefit equally from the opportunities available using ICTs. The growing reliance on eHealth systems may, in fact, contribute to widening gaps in health literacy, access to health care, and health disparities. One of my research goals is to investigate how social conditions contribute to differences in people’s access and use of eHealth services and to use this knowledge to maximize the potential of eHealth to promote behavior change and the maintenance of healthy behaviors.
I'm interested in mining, analysis and visualization of long-term email
archives, and social data in general. How will the fact that people are
actively or passively collecting detailed digital life-logs change the way
family histories are written? What tools and interfaces are needed to enable
this change? What do people find valuable to remember over a long time? I
study these issues with the help of an email visualization and browsing tool
I've built called MUSE (Memories Using Email). Try it out on your own email at
http://mobisocial.stanford.edu/muse.
I also work on the empirical analysis of tie strengths in social networks. How
can tie strength be estimated, and how can it be used? In particular, I've
studied using tie strengths to guide person search in the network. See this
page for our studies: http://xenon.stanford.edu/~hangal/socialsearch/
Apart from these projects, I am interested in technology and social media
that lead to social change in developing countries.
Zack Hayat My research project aims to conceptualize Virtual Research Environment (VRE) based scientific collaboration as a diverse network made up of both humans and nonhuman actors, and to study the influence of the different social and technological aspects of work organization on evaluating successful initiation and development of the scientific collaboration and the VRE. This goal is structured around two objectives: 1) analyze varied instances of VREs using a framework derived from social sciences; and 2) provide a mechanism for conducting evaluations of distributed projects and associated VREs. The evaluation mechanism will identify processes that can be observed early and often in scientific projects, allowing evaluation to become a valuable tool for monitoring project progress and enabling continuous improvement.
The first phase of this research project will be a cross-content analysis of concepts used in social science approaches such as Actor – Network theory and the Socio-Technical paradigm; as well as concepts and theories underlying research collaboration. In the second phase, data collected from surveys and interviews conducted with scientists who are currently using VREs will be analyzed using appropriate social science methods. In the third phase, real-world examples of VREs will be used to conceptualize collaboration as a process of negotiation of interests and construction of outcomes, which involve the continuous engagement of people, technology, and practices. The fourth phase will be the development of a conceptual framework of VREs that will enable me to synthesize my findings and enumerate the factors that I believe are important in determining the success of VRE based scientific collaboration.
The results of this project will have two major outcomes. They will contribute to the further development of theory on remote scientific collaboration, by providing insights on how social and technical aspects of work organization influence the successful initiation, development, and conclusion of scientific collaboration. They will also offer a supplement to the currently predominant summative evaluation that measures only the outcomes of a scientific project, by offering a way to monitoring project progress and correct problems along the way.
Jessica Hullman Socially-motivated visualization websites open information visualization to users who may have little formal experience in data analysis or graph creation. By supporting the sharing of knowledge and skills such sites pave the way for interested "citizen analysts" to collectively generate insights in to socially-relevant data sets. Yet much remains to be known about how the acts of creating and interpreting a visualization is altered by a group setting, as well as how visualization techniques can be adapted to better support analysis by non-statisticians. I use my research to address both the challenges and potential solutions presented by online collaborative visual analytics. This includes understanding how biases and tendencies at the individual, psychological level are interdependent with dynamics at the group level. How do the diverse individuals who gather to create and analyze data visualizations online represent unique collections of skills, limitations, and biases? How can individuals' tendencies, such as what a user has seen in a graph, go on to affect a subsequent users interpretations? My objective is to generate insight into how can these systems be designed so as to 1) prompt more accurate interpretations at the individual level, and/or 2) better extract a high quality signal (e.g., valuable collective insight) from the potentially-noisy signals use of such systems produces.
Jes Koepfler My research over the last couple years has considered two main areas: 1) the role that social media plays in the social/civic participation of marginalized populations onine, such as the homeless, and 2) the use of socially-connected online spaces for informal learning (e.g. learning that occurs in museums, zoos, and other leisure spaces) in support of critical thinking, decision making, and problem solving with regard to social issues. The TMSP literature intersects with these two research spaces and provides useful frameworks for thinking about what it means to participate socially. I am eager to share a brain space with a group of colleagues interested in pushing on the edges of TMSP frameworks (e.g. Preece & Shneiderman, 2009) to see how they work (or not) in alternative use contexts (e.g. leisure or survival) and with non-mainstream populations (e.g. the homeless).
Jess Kropczynski My dissertation research examines the use of various resources leading to mobilization of housing social movement organizations. In the 1960s, the fair housing movement gained national media recognition through activist groups which later evolved into national housing organizations (Saltman, 1978). Later, Erickson (2009) points to decentralization of organizational funding for housing construction at the national level in the 1970s and the emergence of local networks of organizations which secured more funding, political influence, and production of affordable housing than the previously established national organizations. The two major events spurred on by political changes are (1) national housing organizations undergoing a frame transformation from fair housing to affordable housing, and (2) the decentralization of the housing social movement from the national level to the regional/local level. This research asks: how do housing social movement organizations use resources to mobilization differently given these major political events that have taken place within the overall social movement? In addition, which resources or combinations of resources further mobilize which other resources?
There are three resources to mobilization that are of interest: organizational characteristics, network structure/position, and media/Internet presence. Organizations can be described as having very different organizational characteristics such as national/regional targets, income range, and other organizational demographics. There are advantages to networking with organizations containing characteristics both similar (bonding ties) and different (bridging ties); this network structure is also of particular interest to the ways that social movement organizations collaborate with one another at the regional and national level. In addition to communicating with one another, they must also stay in touch with target audiences; social movements still depend on traditional media for gaining participation, but rely heavily on their own websites for informing and recruiting individuals and funding sources.
Guided by theoretical assumptions about the ways that political opportunities are translated into action by organizations (see Meyer & Minkoff, 2004) and organizational mobilization of resources (see Zald & McCarthy, 1987), this study maps the presence and absence of links between organizations both online (by hyperlink network analysis; see Park, 2003) and offline (by survey) and compares both networks to various organizational characteristics (or attributes) and media/Internet presence. Specific measures include centrality; cohesion based on homophily of organizational missions and goals; comparison of network density based on nation/regional status as well as geographic location; and core/perhipheriness based on media/Internet presence (see Wasserman & Faust, 2007). One overarching hypothesis is that organizations at the national level will have different organizational characteristics, network structure, and media/Internet presence than organizations on the regional and local level. This incorporates many sub-hypotheses such as the idea that a more central position in either network has an effect on organizational ability to mobilize specific resources such as volunteers, operating budget, and frequency of media/Internet mentions. Another overarching hypothesis is that organizations with bonding ties will have different organizational characteristics, network structure, and media/Internet presence than organizations with bridging ties. In the process of conducting this research, the interrelatedness of mobilization resources, such as the hypothesis that national organizations may produce more traditional news media headlines, while local organizations have more web presence (based on various webometrics; see Thelwall, 2009). The larger implications of this research aim to provide suggestions for the strategic socio-technical networking of social movement organizations both online and offline to optimize organizational attributes available and gain resources (either network position, visibility, or other attributes) for the unified cause of the social movement.
Eden Litt I am a Ph.D. student in the Media, Technology, and Society program at Northwestern University studying under Professor Eszter Hargittai. My research explores how digital skills influence the way that one uses social media and how this, consequently, may impact one's reputation, opportunities, and day-to-day life. My work seeks to answer questions such as: What are the skills needed to effectively navigate through the intersecting dimensions and demands of both the off- and online worlds? How do we measure such skills? How do the social and technological structures of the Internet interact with the social and technological skills of an individual to impact constructs like one's self-presentation, identity management, and imagined audience? How do people from different backgrounds vary by online skill level? To which key areas do our current educators, policy makers, designers, developers, and social scientists need to be attuned?
Claudia Lopez Moncada My research interests lie on 1) how local (geographically-bounded) online communities can achieve critical mass, 2) how software developers can design the user experience in order to achieve higher participation and survival rates, and 3) how participation in these kind of online communities can affect offline social interactions and community involvement in a neighborhood. I am currently running studies to evaluate adaptive engagement and recruitment strategies to increase the participation in local online communities in Pittsburgh. I analyze navigation patterns as well as users survey answers to understand how users' motivations and offline community involvement can be related to user behavior in the system, and how adaptive techniques can be used to increase users' participation in local online communities. I wish to continue doing research on understanding how online communities and their software designs can encourage (offline) social participation and community involvement in neighborhoods.
Randy Lynn My research investigates the use of ICTs in connection with several other populations and contexts, including youth, education, gender, and social movements. In past studies, I examined the construction of the recent moral panic involving teens and sexting, and investigated the norms, practices, and implications of digital prosumption at social news websites such as Reddit and Digg.
More recently, I have become interested in how embodied actors experience discrimination in disembodied spaces. At UMD’s Theorizing the Web conference in April, I presented a study of the interactional and structural sexism at Reddit, drawing from critical and feminist scholarship regarding embodiment. At the ASA’s upcoming annual meeting, I will present a study that investigates the use of social network sites such as Facebook in the broader context of the maintenance of social ties and social capital.
Works in progress include an analysis of the empirical mechanisms by which the use of social media aids revolutionary movements, as well as a critical inquiry into the problems and limitations of conceptualizing the Internet as a space. In the fall I will begin collecting data for my dissertation project, which will examine the uses of digital media in American high schools.
Christopher Mascaro I am currently a Ph.D. student at Drexel University’s College of Information Science and Technology (iSchool). My research interests focus on technologically mediated group formation and how individuals in these groups interact, form identity, participate in discourse and evolve structurally over time, specifically in the political domain.
The initial trajectory of my research on social media has focused on analyzing electronic trace data of discourse in politically oriented Facebook groups and the network structure that results from these interactions. I am attempting to build on initial findings by analyzing the network structure of other online groups in the political domain and how this network structure influences action within the group.
I am currently involved in a number of other projects that extend beyond political networks. These projects include research in the areas of social informatics in the rural context, collaborative question answering and the analysis of success on online dating sites.
"Mo" Guang Ying Mo I study communication in collaborative networks. When people disseminate information in their networks, they tend to prioritize some network members and de-prioritize other contacts. I study how people make decisions about the order of their contacts and the order of the media they use to communicate with the contacts. I call this “sequencing process”. I also examine how the media can aid or constraint the communication among collaborators.
I want to understand a series of questions. For instance, how does the structure of the social networks shape the sequencing process? How do people understand the different features of the media they use? Why do they prioritize a certain media rather than others? How do media constrain people’s decision making process on sequencing? How do people utilize media to aid their sequencing process? Are there norms about media use in collaborative networks? If yes, how are they formed? How are media used to maintain / break the norms?
Sean Munson My research contributes to the understanding of how to build persuasive systems that use social influence to help people initiate and maintain positive behavior changes. As daily interactions are increasingly mediated through technology, it becomes more important to understand how systems persuade their users to behave in certain ways, either intentionally or unintentionally.
Because any system in which users make choices creates a decision with its own particular influences, this is a topic of importance to designers and builders of persuasive systems, as well as systems whose primary purpose is not to persuade. This requires better knowledge of the complex relationships between people and technology in these persuasive environments.
I study the application of several social influence tactics and theories – including public commitment, social proof, and social comparisons – to the unique affordances of technology-mediated settings by building prototypes and conducting field experiments. I am working in two domains:
* Exposure to political diversity: When political discussion includes diverse points of view, societies make better collective decisions and these choices have greater public legitimacy. I am working to identify effective ways to select and present diverse items in online news aggregators.
* Wellness: I am building and deploying a series of social software applications designed to support various aspects of wellness and focused in particular on their integration with individuals’ existing social networks through Facebook.
Using these applications, I am conducting experiments to evaluate different design techniques based on social influence theories.
In addition to advancing the design of applications in these domains, my findings will contribute to the broader field of persuasive technology. What are effective ways to implement social influence in designs? In what ways are the design opportunities and challenges for social influence different in new applications, such as social network sites, mobile devices, and enhanced sensing? At the same time, these systems allow for large-scale field experiments to explore nuances about social influence theory in the wild. What are personal differences in how individuals respond to different stimuli, and what implications will this have for tailoring applications?
Katy Pearce The primary goal of my research is to understand how individuals adopt, use, and adapt information and communication technology in different cultural, economic, and political contexts, with a special focus on both the rapid convergence of digital content in new devices and the social uses of digital content.
Most of my research takes place in the Former Soviet states known as the South Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia).
Theoretical Orientation
Digital Divide: I study digital divide issues of demographic and culture related to lack of personal computer, Internet and mobile phone awareness, access, and skill.
Diffusion of Innovation: This theory of how, why, and at what rate new ideas spread or are rejected through social systems centers on conditions that increase or decrease the likelihood that something new will be adopted.
Media and Device Convergence, Mobile Technologies: A primary concept underlying some of my research is convergence, the integration of multiple sources of digitized content across devices and into single devices with multiple functions.
ICT4D: Information and Communication Technology for Development is an area in which I have professional experience and is a growing academic interest of mine.
Use of Technology in Social Movements: The use of information and communication technology as well as social media for organizing is also a developing interest of mine.
Political Trust: Political and institutional trust in a post-Soviet context as well as how technology use influences trust is a secondary research track.
Methodological Orientation
Cross-Cultural and Mixed Methods Research: While I am primarily a quantitative scholar, a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, i.e., mixed methods research, provides for a better understanding of research problems, especially in cross-cultural research, than either method alone.
Mary Beth Ray My dissertation focuses on the impact of digital communication technologies on the relationship between musicians and audiences. I'm interested in exploring how the rise of widely available digital technology is shaping the way music is produced, distributed, promoted, and consumed, with a specific focus on the changing nature of the relationship between producers and consumers this new technology has engendered. My research works towards a better understand of how producers and consumers employ and negotiate the online environment created by digital technology, and how the use of digital technology shapes producers’ relationship with their audience, and, conversely, audiences’ relationships with their favorite musical artists.
While this concentration is not a national priority addressed in the Webshop, I believe the foundations of technology-mediated social participation run parallel to my topic, as everyday musical experiences are often mediated through digital spaces which have the ability to simultaneously bring community together and force it apart. Negotiating that ability is key to not only national priorities, but also cultural experiences.
Candice Roberts I am looking at the development of hybrid groups that use an online
networking interface and also function as face-to-face communities. The
initial case study explores CouchSurfing, an international hospitality
network that allows travelers to connect to potential hosts, visitors and
traveling companions globally as well as locally. I am interested in how
the CouchSurfing collective functions in both virtual and physical spaces.
Using both social network analysis and ethnographic techniques, I would like
to understand more about the form and function of CouchSurfing as a result
of its social-cyber fusion. In the broader scope, I want to see how the
CouchSurfing movement fits in with online communities at large and if there
are other similar collectives taking shape in the digital era.
Dana Rotman My research builds on an understanding that technological systems and human behavior are inseparable; their relationship is complex and continuously negotiated. While technology is often created within a specific social context, it is the later interplay between social constructs and technical affordances, that gives rise to interesting questions regarding the use of technological tools and the social and cultural experiences related to them.
The questions that I would like to explore in the Webshop stem from this perspective. They are both methodological, theoretical and practical perspectives.
From a methodological standpoint, several issues are of interest: methodological and practical approaches to conducting qualitative research in large scale web settings (where data scale often obscures individual and small groups’ narratives) and the difficulties that stem from large scale qualitative work; designing studies that would structurally follow and detect changes in online environments over time - especially when trying to understand social changes; and, creating mixed methods approaches that would combine the two previous aspects).
From a theoretical perspective, I would like to learn more about leading theories that support our understanding of TMSP, which come from various fields outside information studies (i.e. from sociology and social-psychology to economics).
Practically, I would like to think of ways that we, as researchers, can harness our knowledge and understandings of TMSP and relevant associated systems, towards the design and advancement of collective social participation. I am also interested in creating research collaborations with fellow students and researchers, and on a smaller scale - online reading groups for support throughout the dissertation process.
Paul Russo Currently at NYU Polytechnic, I am examining the influence of trust on social location technologies and interactions that integrate online and off-line activities. Drawing from research on information systems, social psychology, and social networks, my study identifies the drivers of users’ trust in social location artifacts and other subscribers. My hypotheses will be tested on Facebook’s Places application by connecting surveys to actual usage data. I expect trust in the artifact to depend on usability, situation normality, perceived critical mass, and referrals from trusted sources. I also hypothesize that trust beliefs toward other users—split into friends and everyone else—will depend on instinctive feelings of trust, rationalizations that others won’t do harm, and structural assurances.
More generally, I am interested in applying social technologies, (e.g. mobile services, online communities, and organizational collaborative tools) to the problems that challenge 21st century megacities. IT, both the information and technology components, hold great promise in bringing together individuals, communities, and government to solve issues of transportation, energy, hunger, conservation, and disease control to name a few. I have hands-on experience in both quantitative and qualitative methods, although, my current research is primarily quantitative.
In addition to my research activities, I believe that innovative interdisciplinary education is an essential component to the success of urbanization. Currently, I am working with the faculty at The City University of New York to develop new graduate and undergraduate degrees in Information Systems for Urban Sustainability, Health Information Management, and Public Health Informatics.
Jen Schradie The history of the Internet over the past decade has been defined by the explosion of social media that created seemingly un-limited ways for people to participate in the growing online dialogue. From commenting to blogging, from posting photos to social networking, observers hailed the emergence of the social Web as a step toward creating a more egalitarian platform where everyone’s voice could be heard. But is the Internet really an accurate picture of America? My research interrogates digital democracy claims in America, particularly for marginalized groups. My specific dissertation research examines digital activism: have new media technologies transformed social movement organizations (SMOs) with working class members in the same way as those with upper middle class members? Have they altered the terrain for right-wing groups in the same way as left-wing organizations? I am investigating how the Internet matters for 1) Internal organizing, or the nature of organizational structure and participation; 2) External diffusion of SMOs’ messages. As part of my broader research agenda, I have other related projects:
Summary: When it comes to creating publicly available online content across 10 online activities, the new generation of digital creators are still dominated by those with more income and education. The digital divide still trumps digital democracy.
Schradie, J. 2011, “The Online Gender Production Gap: Whose Voices in the Digital Public Sphere(s)?” International Communication Association Conference, Boston, MA. May 30, 2011.
Summary: I find a widespread gender-based digital production gap. Surprisingly, the inequality persists among all age categories and is widest between college educated men and women. A lack of women’s leisure time, which includes parental status, also does not fully explain the gap.
Schradie, J. 2011, “The Persistence of Class, not Race, Social Media Inequality: Who Still Can’t Afford to Blog?” American Sociological Association Conference, Las Vegas, NV. August 22, 2011.
Summary: Black Americans are less likely to be online than whites but are more likely to blog. Meanwhile, class-based gaps among bloggers persist, regardless of race. Class matters more than race in digital inequality over the last decade.
Victoria Schwanda My research focuses on designing technologies and studying how they can be used to help people gain a greater awareness about themselves. It is becoming increasingly common to use technology to facilitate everyday activities, and in addition to being useful in the moment, these tools save records of how we use them and what data we publish on them. While these records or "trace data" are often thought of as "in the past", they are usually easily accessible and can provide useful insight into how we go about living our lives and who we are.
I'm interested in exploring the use of technologies for reflection in several domains. Trace data from social media sites and other computer-mediated communication tools provide opportunities to better understand our social relationships and how we interact with others. The ways that people use online and offline calendaring tools and to do lists can help make them aware of how they make progress towards goals and motivate future progress. Weight loss is a specific type of goal where people are frequently turning to technology for guidance, and it comes with unique challenges, such as issues about body image, to consider when designing tools that make behavioral suggestions and portray users' progress.
Elizabeth Schwarz My research examines social movements’ use of the Internet with a particular emphasis on their use of social network websites (SNSs). I’m involved in three projects that explore this topic. The first project is an analysis of the impact of SNSs on social movement involvement based on a survey of U.S. Social Forum attendees. The second project is part of an evaluation of the media-based organization and economic development NGO Invisible Children and looks at the organization’s use of SNSs to engage young activists. Finally, starting in the fall I’ll be working with a research group that is exploring the rise of the atheist movement and my concentration will be on the role the Internet has played in the movement’s development. Moving forward, I hope to transition my focus to collective behavior surrounding environmental issues.
David Sparks My studies are in American Politics and Methodology, and I am more specifically interested in political parties, Congress, elections, campaigns, social network analysis, multidimensional scaling, and Bayesian statistics.
My specific interest in network analysis of social media involves the use of such data to estimate quantities of interest to political science, such as candidate evaluations, issue valence, and elite and mass ideology.
Casey Spruill Broadly, I study in organizational communication as it pertains to how groups collaborate and innovate for the purposes of knowledge sharing and knowledge production. I am particularly interested in collaboration and innovation using open source platforms.
Currently, I am working with a research team from Noshir Contractor’s SONIC lab that is partnering with MIT’s Media Lab investigating collaboration patterns among members who participate in the SCRATCH community, which is an online community for youth to share and remix animations and games. With my advisor, Paul Leonardi, I am currently working on two papers. The first paper is focused on how globally distributed automobile engineering teams share knowledge and coordinate work using simulation software. The second paper is a critique of the recent product development literature.
I am also working on a project using social network analysis to investigate collaboration within an online music sharing community. The site, CCmixter.org, is specifically for sharing and remixing member contributed, Creative Commons licensed music. Following my interests in knowledge sharing and production, I am analyzing which members of the site form remix collaboration ties and how songs produced through those collaborations evolve over several derivations of remixing. Also, given that all songs on the site are licensed by the Creative Commons, I am also investigating how different licenses influence collaboration patterns and the remixed music. Starting the CCmixter project has sparked my interest to investigate how the open source model of sharing and production is used in contexts such as architecture and health care.
Liz Thiry My main research interest focuses on online reminiscing for the elderly; specifically creating an online reminiscing system can serve as a life review tool that strengthens community ties, family unity and cultural connectedness among elderly users, while possibily serving as a historical artifact for younger generations.
Jessica Vitak I study the social impacts of communication technologies, specifically technologies classified under the Web 2.0 moniker. I am interested in how users employ the technical features of sites (e.g., privacy settings, Friends Lists) to engage in selective self-presentation, as well as how various uses of the site impact relationships with different types of ties (close friends, coworkers, etc.). My current research focuses on how users manage their self-presentation on social network sites when context collapse (i.e., the flattening of multiple audiences into a singular group—the Friends List) occurs. I have collected both quantitative (~500 surveys) and qualitative (26 in-depth interviews) data and will be analyzing it this summer to test a number of predictions related to perceptions of audience on the site, privacy practices, disclosure behaviors, and perceptions of social capital. I expect to expand on this research in my dissertation. Broadly speaking, I am interested in discovering ways in which social network site users can maximize the benefits they can receive from using the site (e.g., access to information, social support) while minimizing the risks, especially risks associated with privacy concerns.
Will Youmans My dissertation is about Al Jazeera English and its market penetration in the United States. Unable to gain cable and satellite carriage, AJE resorted to web livestreaming, a news website, YouTube, mobile apps and social media to reach an American audience. During the Egyptian protests, AJE became a prominent source for Americans, policymakers and US media, yet their access was almost entirely online (except for a few places, including parts of the Washington, DC area where AJE is carried on television). Online distribution of news is still far behind TV distribution in terms of reach, but trends suggest the gap is closing. AJE was able to enter a market by circumventing gatekeepers though online distribution.
A secondary interest is on the production/input side. AJE increasingly used social media content as the basis for news packages and interfaced with on-the-ground members of the public and activists. User-generation content and "citizen journalism" were important on the news-gathering side as well. Looking at patterns of news-gathering and re-distribution of its content, including by AJE staff on social networking sites, I consider the degree to which AJE offers a form of "networked journalism."
Future research will consider Arab journalism, governments and online news-gathering and distribution. I want to explore the relationship between information circulation, reporting, advocacy networks and reform.
Alyson Young My research interests revolve around aspects of social privacy and security, particularly within the context of social network sites (SNSs). I am interested in understanding the practices and strategies users craft to augment or circumvent the design of SNSs. For instance, what strategies have SNS users developed to negotiate the boundary between privacy and sociability? How do SNS users address their privacy concerns? What value arises from sharing developed strategies with a broader community if the efforts were supported through crowdsourcing? Are there any user-generated practices that could be harvested by designers of SNS systems to better support the needs of users?
Summer Social Webshop Webmaster: PJ Rey
