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.

Over at the Harvard’s Network Governance program Complexity and Social Networks blog, Stanly Wasserman recommends a fascinating new book combining neuroscience and network concepts.

Networks of the Brain by Olaf Sporns was published in Nov 2010 by the MIT Press.  It explores the structure and dynamics of neural networks and the links between the brain’s network architecture and cognition.

From the MIT Press book description:

“Modern network approaches are beginning to reveal fundamental principles of brain architecture and function, and in Networks of the Brain, Olaf Sporns describes how the integrative nature of brain function can be illuminated from a complex network perspective. Highlighting the many emerging points of contact between neuroscience and network science, the book serves to introduce network theory to neuroscientists and neuroscience to those working on theoretical network models.

Brain networks span the microscale of individual cells and synapses and the macroscale of cognitive systems and embodied cognition. Sporns emphasizes how networks connect levels of organization in the brain and how they link structure to function. In order to keep the book accessible and focused on the relevance to neuroscience of network approaches, he offers an informal and non-mathematical treatment of the subject. After describing the basic concepts of network theory and the fundamentals of brain connectivity, Sporns discusses how network approaches can reveal principles of brain architecture. He describes new links between network anatomy and function and investigates how networks shape complex brain dynamics and enable adaptive neural computation. The book documents the rapid pace of discovery and innovation while tracing the historical roots of the field.”

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).

In an article published in the October 2010 issue of the Academy of Management Journal, Francis J. Flynn of Stanford University and Scott S. Wiltermuth of the University of Southern California report that being a broker in one’s intra-organizational network—that is, acting as the link between two or more people in one’s organization who would otherwise be unconnected—may impair one’s ability to assess network members’ agreement on ethical issues. Their findings stand in contrast to many reports in the network literature of the benefits accrued by network brokers. Write Flynn and Wiltermuth, “We provide a counterpoint to research showing that many forms of centrality in social networks can improve social perception (e.g., Krackhardt, 1987), suggesting instead that an individual’s judgments of ethical standards (i.e., the ability to gauge a consensual position) may be impaired by occupying a broker role (i.e., by having more betweenness)” (p. 1075).

 From their abstract:

 “We propose that organization members overestimate the degree to which others share their views on ethical matters. Further, we argue that being a broker in an advice network exacerbates this false consensus bias. That is, a high level of “betweenness centrality” increases an individual’s estimates of agreement with others on ethical issues beyond what is warranted by any actual increase in agreement. We tested these ideas in three separate samples: graduate business students, executive students, and employees. Individuals with higher betweenness centrality overestimated the level of agreement between their ethical judgments and their colleagues’.”

Two articles published in the December 2010 issue of the Journal of Communication examine relationships between social networks, Internet use, and the public sphere. In the first article, Jennifer Brundidge of the University of Texas at Austin analyzes national survey data to determine whether Internet use—specifically, engaging in online political discussion via chat, instant messaging, and e-mail, and accessing online news—affects the heterogeneity of one’s online and offline political discussion networks. Writes Brundidge,

 “Advanced and tested herein is the inadvertency thesis, which theorizes that limitations of selective exposure processes combined with weakened social boundaries found in the online environment suggest that people may be exposed to at least some additional political difference online, if only inadvertently. Hierarchical regression and mediation analyses confirm that online political discussion (directly) and online news (directly and indirectly) bear small yet significant relationships to the overall heterogeneity of political discussion networks, and that partisanship moderates the relationship between online political discussion and political discussion network heterogeneity.”

 In the second article, Keith N. Hampton, Oren Livio, and Lauren Sessions Goulet of the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School report how use of municipal and community wi-fi and 3G mobile phone networks in public spaces affects one’s social networks and democratic engagement. From their abstract:

 “Findings reveal that Internet use within public spaces affords interactions with existing acquaintances that are more diverse than those associated with mobile phone use. However, the level of colocated social diversity to which Internet users are exposed is less than that of most users of these spaces. Yet, online activities in public spaces do contribute to broader participation in the public sphere. Internet connectivity within public spaces may contribute to higher overall levels of democratic and social engagement than what is afforded by exposure within similar spaces free of Internet connectivity.”

For the full articles, see the Journal of Communication Web site.

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: