Having had a good meeting with my supervisors yesterday, they are happy with how things are progressing and we have some exciting avenues to pursue with the data captured so far.
I had a bit of a setback yesterday when in the ninth hour of accessing the data source I made a mistake and caused the whole thing to fail! This has meant that I have started again from the beginning - frustrating, but not the end of the world. I am now six hours into the process again (being extremely careful not to make the same mistake twice) and hopfully should be done tonight/tomorrow.
Whilst my computer has been off periodically because of this accessing I have been doing a lot of reading. Today I read one of the most useful articles I have found so far: Twitter Power - tweets as electronic word of mouth, which covers lots of the areas I am; with similar tests planned and exposition of research in word of mouth, branding and viral marketing. I have also found a useful paper looking at religiosity affecting use of internet and social network sites in particular which is great for further references.
My aim for the day has been to finish the data aquisition and I'm not quite there but "you can't hurry [data], no you'll just have to wait, [data] don't come easy, its a game of give and take, no you can't hurry [data]..." etc. etc. Anyone reading this now thinks I'm mad unless you get the reference? Answers on a postcard please..
Friday 18 February 2011
Thursday 10 February 2011
LR Update
Just a shortish one - another good day, despite less time to work on research today I have been able to find some more excellent articles. What I'm finding is that as I find things for one section of the LR it is leading to uncover things that are useful for other sections. For example, today when researching academic writing on microblogging, references to viral marketing came up. It is too simplistic to think - 'I will just write this section today' - it is much more fluid and cross-pollenating a process than that!!
I'm working on a spreadsheet as well to help visualised the cross-referencing between the papers that I am using so that I can easily find the papers that are more cited by others in the field and also guard against gaps in knowledge of the field of study. It takes a bit of time but now that I have it up and running the papers that I read from now on will be more easily added to it & it should make my life easier! I do need to sort out my account with Refwords so that doesn't become a headache as well in terms of the references. That reminds me - my account with VOSON (mentioned 2-3 posts back) has been granted so I can now go ahead with testing that alongside NodeXl next week.
Anyway, I'm now going to cook in time for the family coming to visit for the weekend. Won't be working tomorrow but have lots of reading to do - yay!
I'm working on a spreadsheet as well to help visualised the cross-referencing between the papers that I am using so that I can easily find the papers that are more cited by others in the field and also guard against gaps in knowledge of the field of study. It takes a bit of time but now that I have it up and running the papers that I read from now on will be more easily added to it & it should make my life easier! I do need to sort out my account with Refwords so that doesn't become a headache as well in terms of the references. That reminds me - my account with VOSON (mentioned 2-3 posts back) has been granted so I can now go ahead with testing that alongside NodeXl next week.
Anyway, I'm now going to cook in time for the family coming to visit for the weekend. Won't be working tomorrow but have lots of reading to do - yay!
Big ideas...
I've just been thinking about the type of social network study I am reading about - where twitter or facebook are used and a very specific interaction is investigated. Some studies also examine in much more general terms the way in which that network functions. But why not approach these questions from another perspective - people.
Let me explain. Think about this: my egocentric social network is far bigger than my twitter network. My egocentric network on twitter is completely unrepresentative of my actual social network. At best it only represents those people that I know who are on twitter.
In reality, my ecocentric network is actually a whole mass of interconnected people, who I communicate with via Twitter, via Facebook, by email, by phone, by texting to a large extent, through letters very occasionally and most frequent of all face to face. It is also constantly changing and evolving both in how I contact them and who I am contacting and why.
I would love to see a comprehensive study of specific people's egocentric networks. Perhaps taking 10s or 100s of people. Imagine the diversity of methods used to communicate - imagine the potential findings and the document of our current communication forms that this would form! This sample could then be repeated years later and potentially conducted again multiple times over the years.
What would it look like?
Interview the participants in detail to identify the forms of communication they use. Use samples of people from deliberately chosen ages and demographics - for instance in the university it could be undergrad, postgrad, lecturer and admin person for instance... The networks within these various communciation forms could then be examined individually i.e. for each person you would come out with their twitter, facebook, email network etc etc and you would then end up with a comprehensive snapshot of the technology they used at that time and who they contacted, how etc. Each network could be analysed for its own merit but then also cross-analysed with each person's other networks and then between people or different groups of people...
It's probably wildly overcomplex & time intensive but anyway, just an idea!
Let me explain. Think about this: my egocentric social network is far bigger than my twitter network. My egocentric network on twitter is completely unrepresentative of my actual social network. At best it only represents those people that I know who are on twitter.
In reality, my ecocentric network is actually a whole mass of interconnected people, who I communicate with via Twitter, via Facebook, by email, by phone, by texting to a large extent, through letters very occasionally and most frequent of all face to face. It is also constantly changing and evolving both in how I contact them and who I am contacting and why.
I would love to see a comprehensive study of specific people's egocentric networks. Perhaps taking 10s or 100s of people. Imagine the diversity of methods used to communicate - imagine the potential findings and the document of our current communication forms that this would form! This sample could then be repeated years later and potentially conducted again multiple times over the years.
What would it look like?
Interview the participants in detail to identify the forms of communication they use. Use samples of people from deliberately chosen ages and demographics - for instance in the university it could be undergrad, postgrad, lecturer and admin person for instance... The networks within these various communciation forms could then be examined individually i.e. for each person you would come out with their twitter, facebook, email network etc etc and you would then end up with a comprehensive snapshot of the technology they used at that time and who they contacted, how etc. Each network could be analysed for its own merit but then also cross-analysed with each person's other networks and then between people or different groups of people...
It's probably wildly overcomplex & time intensive but anyway, just an idea!
Wednesday 9 February 2011
Re Literature Review
Good progress on the LR. Lots more articles on Twitter and a great article on Social Network Sites in particular has led to many others. I have found that with research in this context you find these 'keys' that, when discovered, open many new doors. That paper is definitely one of them!
Whilst I am not bookmarking every article (I download the papers for future reference), I do update my delicious bookmarks which can be accessed on the right of my blog or here which may be of interest. Maybe I should also bookmark every paper I find? We'll see.
Anyway, I have also written the first 400 words towards my literature review Praise the Lord and have drafted bullet points for much of the rest of the section ready for writing tomorrow! So good to have something down now, to write, rewrite and continue adding to over the coming months...
Whilst I am not bookmarking every article (I download the papers for future reference), I do update my delicious bookmarks which can be accessed on the right of my blog or here which may be of interest. Maybe I should also bookmark every paper I find? We'll see.
Anyway, I have also written the first 400 words towards my literature review Praise the Lord and have drafted bullet points for much of the rest of the section ready for writing tomorrow! So good to have something down now, to write, rewrite and continue adding to over the coming months...
Tuesday 8 February 2011
Literature Review Update
Today's aim was to gather more research articles for my Literature Review which I am working on whilst also gathering data for analysis (alluded to below with pretty pictures..).
Apart from a saga involving an ATM eating my bank card which lasted 3 hours (all I wanted was a bite to eat for lunch) I've made some good progress. Some of the most interesting articles which I have located today have been on Twitter; how it is used, how it may be used in the future (as well as the web as whole) and how it was formed. I am planning a section on Microblogging and Twitter itself for my LR. As well as more general research, it is important that I present the academic research already carried out on and using Twitter.
Another of the more useful articles is on Religions going online (although slightly dated as it is 10 years old) and I have found a potentially interesting tool for improving the data collection process: VOSON (Virtual Observatory for the Study of Online Networks) which is a tool developed by The Australian National University. This can dovetail with the NodeXl addition to Excel (mentioned in previous posts) which could be really useful - we shall see.
Apart from a saga involving an ATM eating my bank card which lasted 3 hours (all I wanted was a bite to eat for lunch) I've made some good progress. Some of the most interesting articles which I have located today have been on Twitter; how it is used, how it may be used in the future (as well as the web as whole) and how it was formed. I am planning a section on Microblogging and Twitter itself for my LR. As well as more general research, it is important that I present the academic research already carried out on and using Twitter.
Another of the more useful articles is on Religions going online (although slightly dated as it is 10 years old) and I have found a potentially interesting tool for improving the data collection process: VOSON (Virtual Observatory for the Study of Online Networks) which is a tool developed by The Australian National University. This can dovetail with the NodeXl addition to Excel (mentioned in previous posts) which could be really useful - we shall see.
Monday 7 February 2011
Further Social Network Visualisations
Today I've been able to get quite a lot more data for eco-centric networks. The images on the left show some more complex social networks (not particularly well arranged) which give an insight into the sort of visualisations that can be created using the NodeXl tool.These are both simple eco-centric networks which show how one user (me for example) follows others, these others may also be following me. Some of the people I follow also follow each other - hence the rather hectic lines connecting all the different actors in the network. These samples are limited to >200 people but each dot represents an account or person. The size of the dot in these visualisations has been defined by the 'betweeness centrality' value which it has within the network i.e. '..how many of the shortest paths between two others some actor lies on'. The colour of the dots has been defined by their Eigenvector Centrality - how important that actor is within the network. These can now be used to compare with other networks and to represent many other characteristics of the network visually.
Friday 4 February 2011
Return to posting with Node XL success
Have had a successful day working with the social networking visualisation tool NodeXl which allows you to analyse social media networks. Twitter is the source of the network data and today I have finally got some data into the worksheet and been able to play around with it!
My supervisor will be happy to know that I have now mapped her ecocentric social network on Twitter!
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