Pruitt-Igoe

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth on 99% Invisible

Dunbar's Number Redux

Ran across this article today, new research from Robin Dunbar.

Oxford University researchers found maintaining friendships requires more brain power.

Their study concluded that people with real friends have to use more cognitive skills to understand what someone else thought.

This, however, did not occur with "online" friends, such as those made on social networking sites including Facebook or Twitter.

Scientists discovered a link between the number of friends people had and the size of their orbital prefrontal cortex, which is a region of the brain found just above the eyes.

The conclusions, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, shows for the first time that competency in social skills is determined by the size of peoples' brains.

Cyber-bullying

Cyber-bullying, naturally, is a relatively new phenomenon. While one could find examples of rude, malicious, and harassing behavior going back to the first days of email, AOL, and instant messaging, what is referred to as cyber-bullying today has grown alongside Web 2.0 and social networking.
Cyber-bullying is often used to refer to attacks made against minors, while harassment of adults is generally called cyber-stalking. Both are demonstrably harmful to the victim, and often there is little that victims and law enforcement can do.

Check out the Wikipedia entry for the topic here.

Institutions Versus Collaboration

Dunbar's Number

Check out some articles on this interesting concept.
From National Public Radio.

Dunbar has found 150 to be the sweet spot for hunter-gatherer societies all over the world. From the Bushmen of Southern Africa to Native American tribes, a typical community is about 150 people. Amish and Hutterite communities — even most military companies around the world — seem to follow the same rule.

The reason 150 is the optimal number for a community comes from our primate ancestors, Dunbar says. In smaller groups, primates could work together to solve problems and evade predators. Today, 150 seems to be the number at which our brains just max out on memory.

A guy tries to beat Dunbar's Number

On Wikipedia

Some commentary on the power of weak ties and why Dunbar's Number might be irrelevant.

The Hidden Influence of Social Networks

Video we watched in class on 3/13.

Wise and Unwise Crowds

Wise crowds

• Diversity of opinion
• Independence
• Decentralization
• Aggregation

Unwise Crowds

• Homogeneity
• Centralization
• Division
• Imitation
• Emotionality

Chance Favors the Connected Mind

We often think that brilliant ideas and innovations as 'eureka!' moments. In fact, most of the important ideas that have changed our world came from discussions in coffee shops, labs, or around conference tables.

The Wisdom of Crowds

Basic Vocabulary

In class on Tuesday (3/6), we briefly covered some of the foundational concepts of social networking. The main takeaway from this lecture was a handful of vocabulary terms. These terms are just a drop in the bucket of all the terms one could compile when discussing social networks and social network analysis.

- social network: a patterned set of relationships between two or more actors
- actor (n) an entity in a relationship
- social capital (n)  the resources—such as ideas, information, money, trust—available in and through personal and business networks
- network tie (n)  the connection or relationship between actors
- density (n)  reflects how many people in a network are connected (usually directly) to each other
- network size (n) the number of nodes
- activity (n) how participative a node is
- influence (n) the potential to affect nodes
- social network analysis (n)  the mapping and measuring of relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations, computers, Web sites, and other information/knowledge processing entities


Some other terms related to this topic that I did not include in the lecture.
- centrality (n) the extent to which an actor is in the middle of the network
- control (n) how much authority a node has over the flow of information
- access (n) how easily a node can get resources necessary to be successful in the organization
- dyad (n) two actors and the relational tie between them
- triad (n) a subset of a social network composed of three actors and the possible ties between them
As well as a few kinds of networks:
- communication network: the informal structure of an organization as represented in ongoing patterns of interaction, either in general or with respect to a given issue.
- information network: shows who goes to whom for advice on work-related matters.

- problem-solving network: indicates who goes to whom to engage in dialogue that helps people solve problems at work. 

- knowledge network: captures who is aware of whose knowledge and skills, and an access network shows who has access to whose knowledge and expertise.

2 examples of a sociograms:

Purpose

Welcome to the Social Networking & Popular Culture blog. I will be using this simple site to share some of the course material and other items here. If you have any links or information you'd like to share, please do!