Data Studies 2021 // S08. Networks and platform-specific data
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Pablo Velasco // Information Studies // pablov.me
Plan for the day:
- Graph theory & Sociometrics
- ANT epistemology & networks
- Digital Methods and Digital Methods Initiative
- Digital Objects: hyperlink & hashtag
- TCAT server
The seven bridges of Königsberg problem: is it possible to cross each bridge once and return to the starting point?
Graph theory
Leonhardt Euler solved the problem, and inaugurated the field of graph theory: all points must have an even degree (an even number of connections).
Baran (1964)
- Structures based on Nodes and Edges
- Statistical/Quantitative relations: clusters, centrality, density
- Centralized, Decentralized and Distributed
Sociometrics
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Moreno (1934)
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Discover social life through network properties & topologies
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Analysis of relational data
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Gain insight into social relations and make them available to intervention (Guggenheim 2012) -> participants become observers of their own problems
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Likes and dislikes in a girl's boarding school
Gießmann, S. (2017). Jacob Levy Moreno, Sociometry, and the Rise of Network Diagrammatics
ACTIVITY: trace a network of the class
- What are the nodes?
- What are the edges?
- What is the starting point?
- How do you measure the weight of the edges?
Go to: https://kinopio.club/ds21s08-XQXwaV8m0qglvM_h3BElR
(you need to sign up, but not obligatory!)
Actor Network Theory(ANT)
Actor Network Theory emphasizes a "flat" approach to the social, and argues that it can be study as a network consisting of any kind of elements.
Latour, B. (2007). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory
ANT
- Relations between “technology” and “society”
- 1-level: neither nature and society, nor micro and macro
- Actors: computers, text, humans, etc (and mostly the places they "collide")
- Properties emerge from networks
Latour, B., Jensen, P., Venturini, T., Grauwin, S., & Boullier, D. (2012). ‘The whole is always smaller than its parts’–a digital test of Gabriel Tardes’ monads.
- No point of departure (but an epistemological point of entry)
More subtle than the notion of system, more historical than the notion of structure, more empirical than the notion of a complexity, the idea of network is the Ariadne's thread of these interwoven stories (Latour 1993)
Actors in a social network:
- By their engagement roles:
- sources
- leaders
- commenters
- lurkers
- etc.
- By their human / non-human categorization:
- bots
- hashtags
- servers
- etc.
- By their structural role:
- bridges
- hubs
- stars
- etc.
How to do empirical research from this epistemological approach?
Digital methods
Digital Methods (big umbrella)
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Digital methods: “the use of online and digital technologies to collect and analyse research data"
Snee et al (2016). Digital methods for social science -
Snee et al include:
- web-based surveys
Dillman, D. A. (2011). Mail and Internet Surveys: The Tailored Design Method - online interviewing and focus groups
Kazmer, M. M., & Xie, B. (2008). Qualitative Interviewing in Internet Studies: Playing with the media, playing with the method - computer mediated discourse-analysis
Herring, S. C. (2004). Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis - digital ethnographies e.g. virtual ethnography
Hine, C. (2000). Virtual Ethnography
- web-based surveys
Redistribution of methods
Marres, N. (2012). The redistribution of methods: On intervention in digital social research, broadly conceived
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redistribution of research: not so much an opposition between IT firms and researchers (e.g. Savage and Burrows 2007), but a reconfiguration of agents in social research
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4 views on the redistribution of methods (along a spectrum):
- methods as usual: old social methodologies incorporated into digital devices
- big-methods: vast datasets allow us to perform large-scale analysis on real network dynamics**
- virtual methods: adaptation of the social research methods into the digital
- digital methods: adapt digital devices for the purposes of social research
"Natively digital" methods & objects
The rise of the Internet enables new research methods that deploy specifically digital devices such as links, comments and shares
Rogers, R. (2009). The End of the Virtual: Digital Methods
- methods embedded in online devices: of crawling, scraping, folksonomy
- digital objects: tweet, username, timestamp, hyperlink, hashtag
- built upon existing services
Places of research (spheres)
Rogers, R. (2013). Digital Methods
- mid to late 90s: hyperlink, individual website analysis
- early to mid 00s: blogosphere, search engine critique
- late 00s: location-aware, web 2.0, social media
"cross-spherical analysis”: web, blogs, news, twitter, etc
Digital object: hyperlink
Brin, S., & Page, L. (1998). The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual Web search engine.
Digital object: hashtag
Early use: IRC(Internet Relay chat)
Ad-hoc hashtags
- ad hoc : emergent "as necessary" / "when needed"
- coordination between distributed, and possibly disconnected actors
- '#'
- user generated
- competing specific themes and uses
- evolving and non-deterministic
- community: common topics and (direct) engagement
- issue network (Marres): comunities generated from contested topics
Top hashtags in the Climate Change space on Twitter over time (March-Jun 2012)
(see project information here)
Visual Network Analysis
(tbc in workshop)
- evolving, non-deterministic data
- force-vector: gravity
- not spatial, but relative position of the nodes (in relation to each other)
- borders are not exact, communities are fluid and can overlap
- mixed methods: qualitative inquiry before, after, or alongside the quantitative analysis
Venturini, T., & Jacomy, M. (2014). Visual Network Analysis
Based on Venturini et al (2014), which structures can you identify in this network? Is it significant, regardless of its specific content?
DMI tool: TCAT
https://ds.cc.au.dk/
(access code on workshop page)
- API based
- Built by keywords OR geolocations
- Can be thoroughly queried (if you have a complicated query on a big bin, it will take some time)
- Different data and formats can be exported from it (depending on the amount of data and the bin size, this process may take some time)