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A Union Divided: Polarization in the Screen Actors Guild – Nina O’Brien
Presentation (PDF file)

Collective Action in Virtual Organizations, Networks of Collaboration in an Online Scientific Community – Nina O’Brien, Lauren Frank, Jessica Gould, Courtney Schultz, Matthew Weber, Peter Monge
Presentation (PDF file)

Ecological Dynamics of Discourse in Scientific Communities: Co-evolution of Conceptual and Social Networks – Drew Margolin
Presentation (PDF file)

Examining Online Organizations with Longitudinal Network Data from the World Wide Web - Matthew Weber, Peter Monge
Presentation (PDF file)

Predictors & Effects of Multiplexity in an Interorganizational Network – Amanda M. Beacom, Lauren B. Frank, Jonathan Nomachi, & Lark Galloway-Gilliam
Presentation (PDF file)

Team Assembly and Scientific Collaboration on NanoHub – Drew Margolin, Katherine Ognyanova, Cuihua Shen, Meikuan Huang, Yun Huang, Noshir Contractor
Presentation (PDF file)

The Importance of Place in Collaborative Inter-Organizational Networks – Lauren B. Frank, Amanda M. Beacom, Jonathan Nomachi, Lark Galloway-Gilliam
Presentation (PDF file)

Bridging: Locating critical connectors in a network

Tom Valente – network scientist, friend of ANN and professor at the USC Keck School of Medicine – has published a new paper written in collaboration with Kayo Fujimoto. A preprint of the article was recently released by the Social Networks journal.

From the paper:

“This paper proposes several measures for bridging in networks derived from Granovetter’s (1973) insight that links which reduce distances in a network are important structural bridges. Bridging is calculated by systematically deleting links and calculating the resultant changes in network cohesion (measured as the inverse average path length). The average change for each node’s links provides an individual level measure of bridging. We also present a normalized version which controls for network size and a network-level bridging index. Bridging properties are demonstrated on hypothetical networks, empirical networks, and a set of 100 randomly generated networks to show how the bridging measure correlates with existing network measures such as degree, personal network density, constraint, closeness centrality, betweenness centrality, and vitality. Bridging and the accompanying methodology provide a family of new network measures useful for studying network structure, network dynamics, and network effects on substantive behavioral phenomenon.”

We are happy to announce that the Annenberg Network of Networks has joined a new international initiative launched by the Web Science Trust. The Web Science Network of Laboratories (WSTNet) is a joint effort of researchers from leading institutions around the world. Its goal is to promote the ongoing development of Web Science.

From the Web Science Trust:

The list of the founding WSTNet labs includes:

• Annenberg Network of Networks, University of Southern California
• Decentralized Information Group, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Department of Computer Science, VU Amsterdam
• Digital Enterprise Research Institute, NUI Galway
• Institute for Web Science and Technologies (WeST), Universität Koblenz-Landau
• Oxford Internet Institute
• SONIC Lab, Northwestern University
• Tsinghua-Southampton Web Science Laboratory at Shenzhen
• Web Science Research Centre, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• Web Science Research Group, University of Southampton

International Seminar on Network Theory:
Network Multidimensionality in the Digital Age

The international Network Theory Conference, organized by the ANN and SONIC research centers,  took place on Feb 19-20 at the University of Southern California. Bruno Latour delivered the keynote speech titled “Networks, Societies, Spheres: Reflections of an Actor-network theorist.” The four panels were focused on conceptual and methodological aspects of network theory, network inclusion and exclusion, network theories of power, and the semantic web. The list of presenters includes: Noshir Contractor, Peter Monge, Paul Leonardi, Yochai Benkler, Ernest J. Wilson III, Rahul Tongia, Karine Barzilai-Nahon, Wendy Hall, Nigel Shadbolt, David Grewal, and Manuel Castells.

Additional information: conference program, participant biographies and presentation slides. Brief summaries of all presentations and Q&A sessions will soon be posted on the ANN website.

Watch the full video from the event below
(use the side arrows to move forward and back through the conference panels)

(YouTube playlist  link)

Networks, Societies, Spheres: Reflections of an Actor-network theorist

Bruno Latour

Reported by Drew Margolin & Anna Li

Bruno Latour, born in 1947 in Beaune, Burgundy, from a wine grower family, was trained first as a philosopher and then an anthropologist. From 1982 to 2006, he has been professor at the Centre de sociologie de l’Innovation at the Ecole nationale supérieure des mines in Paris and, for various periods, visiting professor at UCSD, at the London School of Economics and in the history of science department of Harvard University. He is now professor at Sciences Po Paris where he is also the vice-president for research of that school.

Professor Latour’s lecture combines a discussion of the core themes in Actor Network Theory with insights regarding the enormous quantities of data that are now being produced and made available to researchers.  Using a broad array of examples, including Isaac Newton, the Space Shuttle Disaster, and a comparison of Marcel Proust’s childhood to the world faced by youth today, Latour explains and elaborates on the idea notion networks should replace objects as our locus of attention.  In particular, Latour recalls the insights of Gabriel Tarde and his criticism of the idea that there exists “a society” which is an object separate from individuals.

Latour argues that the notion of society was invented to compensate for the lack of data available to researchers in earlier eras.  Social theory, he suggests, is a function of the “datascape” — what we can record about behavior.  Today we have access to enormous amounts of data, and it is a mistake to try to fit our treatments of these data into traditional constructs such as “the individual” and “society.”  Instead of trying to understand individuals, who are irreducibly complex, we should focus attention on the networks through which they distribute action.  Unlike the notion of society, these networks are simplifications rather than aggregations.

Latour ends the lecture by pointing to two challenges that face researchers.  First, he argues that we must confront the technical and theoretical challenge posed by the new mass of data.  Second, he cites Walter Lippman and his concern with controversy and the fragility of public discourse.  Latour addresses these remarks in particular to the climate change controversy and the role that scholars could play in re-inventing the newspaper.