Citation networks have long been known as useful tools of representation and data analysis in scientometric research.  A team of scholars coming from biology and physics have now set out to build a suite of citation mapping and recommendation services for everyday use.

Read the article in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Citation by Citation, New Maps Chart Hot Research and Scholarship’s Hidden Terrain

On a related note: check out VOSviewer, one existing software for analysis & visualization of bibliometric networks. As of last week, the new version 1.4 is out, offering bug fixes and better support for Pajek files.

Mark Newman is a physics professor at the University of Michigan and the author of a comprehensive textbook on network analysis (Networks: An Introduction, 784 pages) He has studied networks in fields ranging from sociology and economics to computer science and biology. In 2010,  he gave three talks on network analysis as part of the Santa Fe Institute‘s 2010 Ulam Lecture series.

We recommend all three for people interested in finding more about relational thinking and network structures.

2010 Ulam Lecture – The Connected World

2010 Ulam Lecture – What Networks Can Tell Us about the World

2010 Ulam Lecture – Using Networks to Make Predictions

Collaboration network of workshop participants.

The 3rd International Workshop on Network Theory, “Web Science Meets Network Science,” was held March 4 – 6, 2011 at Northwestern University. Sponsored by ANN, the Science of Networks in Communities Laboratory (SONIC), at Northwestern, and the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO), the workshop featured ten presentations by a diverse group of scientists working at the intersection of Web science and network science. In an article about the workshop in the May 2011 issue of Communications of the ACM, Alex Wright writes:

“The workshop organizers hoped to frame a new research agenda by leveraging the commonalities and distinctive contributions of Web science and network science, and to formulate questions of interest to both communities. The two-day conference covered a wide range of broadly related topics such as debating the merits of network science’s ‘pure’ scientific approach vs. the more applied, engineering-oriented tactics of Web science; analyzing the effects of scale on network behaviors; exploring questions of causality, correlation, and inference; and discussing the possibility of a Web index, an idea currently being promoted by [Tim] Berners-Lee. Looking ahead, plenty of room exists for continuing dialogue between the two camps, who will almost certainly continue to probe each other’s boundaries while searching for common ground.”

For a list of presentations, photos, and additional information about the workshop, please see the ANN Conference page on this site.

Some highlights of ANN participants’ recent research-related honors and activities:

At the International Communication Association (ICA) Annual Conference in Boston, MA, at the end of May, two ANN alumni received awards for their dissertation work. Matthew Weber received the ICA Organizational Communication Division’s Redding Dissertation Award for his dissertation, “From the New York Times to the Huffington Post: The Emergence and Transformation of Coevolving Forms of News Production.” Cuihua (Cindy) Shen received second-place for the ICA Communication and Technology Division’s Herbert S. Dordick Dissertation Award for her dissertation, “The Patterns, Effects and Evolution of Player Networks in Online Gaming Communities.” Also at the ICA Conference this May, Janet Fulk was elected ICA Fellow for her distinguished contributions to the field of communication.

 This summer ANN participants will engage in several research programs of note. Martin Hilbert will attend the Santa Fe Institute’s annual Complex Systems Summer School, and Katya Ognyanova will attend the Oxford Internet Institute Summer Doctoral Program. Jaclyn Selby will be a summer fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, DC, via funding through a COMPASS Fellowship, and will also attend the Annenberg Oxford Media Policy Summer Institute.

In April, 2011, the International Journal of Communication (IJoC) published a special section of articles titled “Network Multidimensionality in the Digital Age,” developed from presentations made by speakers at the 2010 ANN Conference. The special section of the journal is co-edited by Manuel Castells, Peter Monge, and Noshir Contractor, and includes work by the co-editors as well as Yochai Benkler, Wendy Hall, Bruno Latour, Karine Nahon, Rahul Tongia, and Ernest Wilson.  

From the IJoC press release:

 “Human communication networks, like those typically found in the network society, are highly complex and relationally rich in that they often connect different types of objects with multiple types of relations. This special section presents seven articles that explore the implications of this network multidimensionality. The articles cover a broad array of issues including network sociomateriality, network power, network exclusion, the semantic web, network fuzziness, and network spheres. The theoretical implications of network multidimensionality are explored and a number of relevant social examples are examined including the degrees of freedom in WikiLeaks networks, the kinds of power in societal networks, and the network changes that occur when technologies and other sociomaterial objects are brought inside the network. The keynote article by Bruno Latour argues that network multidimensionality eradicates the long-standing theoretical distinction between individual and society.”

 The articles may be downloaded from the IJoC website, http://ijoc.org/, or via the ANN Conference page on the ANN website, http://ascnetworksnetwork.org/ann-conference.

Cuihua Shen

In a new study published in the February 2011 issue of Communication Research, ANN alumna and University of Texas at Dallas Assistant Professor Cuihua (Cindy) Shen, together with University of Southern California Associate Professor Dmitri Williams, use several data sources and analytical tools—including network analysis—to examine how use of the Internet and a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) affect psychosocial well-being. Studying a sample of over 5,000 players of the MMO EverQuest II, Shen and Williams observed that the effects of Internet and MMO use were dependent on the purposes, contexts, and individual characteristics of the players. For example, they found that using the Internet to meet new people and having a larger in-game communication network were detrimental to psychosocial well-being, whereas having an extroverted personality and using the Internet and MMO to interact with preexisting social ties were associated with positive psychosocial outcomes. Summarizing a number of the study’s interesting findings on online activity, psychosocial outcomes, and media effects, the authors conclude, “The results suggest that Internet use and game play have significant nuances and should not be considered as monolithic sources of effects” (p. 123).

Stanford professor Woody Powell talks about emergence and failure in institutional networks. Powell discusses high-tech clusters and dynamics of inter-organizational ties in the biotech industry. Watch the video of this ANN research seminar: