Case Studies in Information Networks:

1
Lecture 12

• Case Studies in Information Networks
• Part 2

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Todays Plan

1. Club Nexus
2. Related Work
3. Implications for Design
4. Final Papers

3
Findings
Look Familiar?
4
Findings Contd

• Club Nexus shows evidence of
• Clustering Cliques
• Bridges weak ties
• Betweenness
• Homophily
• Similarity Drops with Network Distance

5
Uh, What?
Figure 4 Average fraction of users with a common
trait (year, undergraduate or graduate status,
etc.) as a function of the distance from a user
having that trait. The plot is truncated at eight
hops because less than .03 of the pairs are
separated by more than eight hops.
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Pros

• Surprise! Online Offline!
• Applied Theory in an Actual Social Network
• Rarity
• Oft-Cited

7
and Cons.

• Messy, Self-Report Data
• Questionable Methods Choices
• Personality Stereotypes?!
• Stanford?!

8
Small World Effect

• How do people use information to search in a
  network?

Lada Adamic and Eytan Adar. How to search a
social network. Social Networks Volume 27, Issue
3, July 2005, Pages 187-203
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Implications for Design

• Some stable patterns of behavior are difficult to
  change.
• What are the sound assumptions about network of a
  given structure?
• Identifying influential users
• What information is exposed to the network?
• Social network analysis as a tool for users.

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Privacy

• How do social networks influence privacy,
  perceptions of privacy?

Stutzman, F. (2006, April). An evaluation of
identity-sharing behavior in social
network communities. Paper presented at the iDMAa
and IMS Code Conference, Oxford, Ohio.
11
Closing in on Paper Topics
12
Nuts and Bolts

• 25 35 Pages
• 30 of your grade
• Due May 15th

13
Picking a Topic

• Scope Narrowly!
• Places to start
• Pick a topic from class you are interested in
• Pick a particular case study of interest
• Pick a particular group or community of interest

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Research Strategies

• Getting Started
• Find a paper you love, expand from there.
• Find a paper you hate, expand from there.
• Find two papers that disagree, explore the
  issues.
• Find a paper you can apply to another domain.

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Next Week

• Diffusion of Innovations
• or
• Everything Malcolm Gladwell wanted you to think
  he figured out on his own.