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!