Research
Projects
Understanding and enabling network dynamics in virtual communities
Peter Monge, Noshir Contractor (Northwestern University), Brian Uzzi (Northwestern University), Janet Fulk, Lauren Frank, Jessica Gould, Bettina Heiss, Young Ji Kim, Drew Margolin, Allie Noyes, Nina O’Brien, Katherine Ognyanova, Cindy Shen, Kimberly Stevens, Matt Weber, Zeina Atrash, Mike Stringer, Dean Malmgren, Irmak Sirer, Roger Guimera, Marta Sales-Pardo, Jordi Duch
While there is growing awareness of the socioeconomic consequences of team collaborations, we have little socio-technical understanding of how teams are assembled, or how a given mode of assembly impacts their effectiveness. This project seeks to address this limitation. We develop a theoretical framework to understand the socio-technical dynamics shaping the assembly of teams in virtual communities.
With the advent of cyberinfrastructure, the assembly of teams is both enabled and constrained by the multidimensional networks in which members are embedded. These multidimensional networks include a variety of links that exist not only among individuals, but also with documents, datasets, workflows, analytic tools, and concepts. With these new configurations in mind, and using data from six major initiatives serving diverse scientific virtual communities, this project addresses two main research questions: First, what are the socio-technical motivations that explain the assembly of teams in virtual communities? Second, to what extent do the assembly mechanisms of teams influence their effectiveness?
Project description (PDF file)
The Evolution of Interorganizational Networks in NGO Communities
Peter Monge, Janet Fulk, Jessica Gould, Joyee Chatterjee, Bettina Heiss, Seungyoon Lee, Nina O’Brien, Drew Margolin, Cuihua Shen, Kimberlie Stephens, Matthew Weber
This research draws on archival data sources to examine changes in the network structures of international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) over time. Network analyses of these sources allow for empirical tests of a novel integration and expansion of the theories of organizational evolution and the new science of network in the context of the study of nonprofit organizing. Interorganizational network datasets were constructed based on the Yearbook of International Organizations (YIO), published annually by the Union of International Associations (UIA). Additional datasets capture the ways NGOs are linked via Internet hyperlinks. Access to link data has been provided to the researchers by Google Inc. as well as the Internet archive Wayback Machine.
Secondary sources such as information on organizational websites were used to supplement these datasets. Several social network analyses tools were combined to scrutinize the properties of the NGO networks on multiple levels of analysis, ranging from individual links between organizations to the entire linkage structure of the network. Visualization software helped to illustrate the dynamic changes of NGO networks over time and to test a variety of hypotheses about their structural evolution.
Project description (PDF file)
WebHistorian Digging into Data
Peter Monge, Janet Fulk, Matthew Weber, Eric Meyer,Kris Carpenter, Seamus Ross
The WebHistorian Digging into Data grant application is a grant proposal to fund international research examining the development of content and networks between Web sites and online organizations over time. The proposal itself will fund the development of an archival Web crawler the will interface with the Internet Archive (archive.org), as well as a number of exemplar projects that will build towards a common methodology for archival Internet research. If funded, this project will be supported by the NSF and NEH (USA), SSHRC (Canada) and JISC (UK).
Project description (PDF file)
