Workshops
Studying Interaction in Online Communities: From Data Sources to Research Results
WORKSHOP SUMMARY
Online communities provide researchers with social network data of unprecedented scope and quality. This data makes it possible for researchers to answer core questions of social behavior (e.g. How do norms emerge? What makes some groups succeed and thrive while others wither?), but answers to these questions are only available if the trails of online interactions are collected, organized, and arranged for analysis. This involves several stages of processing: scraping and saving raw data from online communities; parsing the data into a format that can be queried effectively; extracting subsets of the data which can be processed by analytical tools; and finally analyzing the data and producing results. This workshop will focus on methods, tools, and techniques for overcoming the challenges associated with each stage of this process. Researchers will present work detailing their approaches and the results they have achieved, and will discuss new approaches and consider their application.
WORKSHOP DETAILS
Additional information, including the call for papers, session themes, and links to
relevant resources are available at the following Web address:
http://interactionworkshop2007.blogspot.com/2007/01/workshop-details.html
ORGANIZERS AND CONTACT INFO
Thomas M. Lento is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at Cornell University, and a contract researcher with the Community and Technologies Group at Microsoft Research. His research interests focus on social network topologies, diffusion, contagion, and the spread of rumor in online networks, particularly weblog and threaded discussion networks. His recent work examines the effect of social network position on retention in a weblogging system. TML5 AT cornell.edu
Howard T. Welser is a Post Doctoral Researcher in the Institute for Social Sciences at Cornell University, and will be, effective September 2007, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Ohio University. His research investigates how micro-level processes generate collective outcomes, with application to status achievement in avocations, development of institutions and social roles, the emergence of cooperation, and network structure in computer mediated interaction. His recent work has focused on the intersection of participation and network structure in online discussion groups, blogs, and Wikipedia. htw3 AT cornell.edu
Eric Gleave is a sociology graduate student at the University of Washington. His research projects include developing network methods, the demographic and structural bases for early modern revolts, simulation studies of cooperation and corruption, and discerning social roles in online discussion spaces. egleave AT u.washington.edu
Marc A. Smith is a Research Sociologist at Microsoft Research specializing in the social organization of online communities. He leads the Community Technologies Group at MSR. He is the co-editor of Communities in Cyberspace (Routledge), a collection of essays exploring the ways identity, interaction, and social order develop in online groups. Smith's research focuses on the ways group dynamics change when they take place in social cyberspaces. Many groups in cyberspace produce public goods and organize themselves in the form of a commons (for related papers see: http://www.research.microsoft.com/~masmith). masmith AT microsoft.com