1. fdm 20c introduction to digital media
social networks
fdm 20c introduction to digital media
lecture
warren sack / film & digital media department / university of california, santa cruz

2. last time the web as a technology mini-project 1
who is tim berners-lee?
an abbreviated reading of “the world-wide web” by berners-lee, et al.
what are URIs, universal resource identifiers?
what is HTML, the hypertext markup language?
what is HTTP, the hypertext transfer protocol?
mini-project 1
the web as an art form
lisa jevbratt (1:1)
mark napier (shredder)
rsg collective (carnivore)

3. key points (so far)
When technologies connect or separate people, they become media.
Technologies embody social, political, cultural, economic and philosophical ideas and relationships.
When a medium is new, it is often used to simulate old media.
New media do not replace old media, they displace them.
People make media and then media make people.

4. key points
New media technologies usually reinforce existing social networks or even work to isolate people.
(BUT) When new media technologies facilitate new social networks, they simultaneously challenge existing social, political and economic relationships.

5. outline for today
social networks as science
social networks as technology
social networks as popular culture
social networks as art
mini-project 2: add yourself to friendster

6. social networks as science: field
social network analysis is an interdisciplinary social science, but has been of especial concern to sociologists;
recently, physicists and mathematicians have made large contributions to understanding networks in general (as graphs) and thus contributed to an understanding of social networks too.

7. social network as science: definition
[Social network analysis] is grounded in the observation that social actors [i.e., people] are interdependent and that the links [i.e., relationships] among them have important consequences for every individual [and for all of the individuals together]. ... [Relationships] provide individuals with opportunities and, at the same time, potential constraints on their behavior. ... Social network analysis involves theorizing, model building and empirical research focused on uncovering the patterning of links among actors. It is concerned also with uncovering the antecedents and consequences of recurrent patterns. (from Linton C. Freeman)

8. social network as science: history
J.L. Moreno (1934) Friendship choices between 4th grade boys (triangles) and girls (circles)

9. social networks as science: history
kinship studies: Radcliffe-Brown, Levi-Strauss, etc.
(see Jeff Tobin, faculty.oxy.edu/tobin/anth100/ outlines/05.html)

10. social networks as science: history
(see Jeff Tobin, faculty.oxy.edu/tobin/anth100/ outlines/05.html)

11. social networks as science: history
Stanley Milgram (1967) “The Small World Problem,” Psychology Today
Milgram sent 60 letters to various recruits in Wichita, Kansas who were asked to forward the letter to the wife of a divinity student living at a specified location in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The particpants could only pass the letters (by hand) to personal acquaintances who they thought might be able to reach the target - whether directly or via a "friend of a friend".
“six-degrees of separation”

12. social networks as science: history
Mark Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties”
Sometimes acquaintances are more valuable than friends (e.g., when one is looking for a job).

13. social networks as science: equivalence
A and B are “structurally equivalent”
because they connect to the same people
and thus have equivalent
positions in the network. B

14. social networks as science: centrality
Diane is central; Jane is not.
See

15. social networks as science: bridges
if you’re a boy in this network (a triangle)
and you want to meet a girl (a circle),
who are you going to call for an introduction?

16. social networks as science: bridges
this guy, right?

17. social networks as science: social capital
if you connect separate networks you have bridging capital
if you are central to a network you have bonding capital

18. social networks as science: bowling alone
sociologist robert putnam claims that united states citizens no longer know or trust their neighbors and thus communities have lost their social capital
when did we start to lose it? after the second world war
what media technology came into wide-spread use after the second world war?
recall today’s key points

19. social networks as technology
, newsgroups, and weblogs
in the design of the arpanet (the forerunner to the internet) was an afterthought!

20. social networks as technology
search engines: e.g., Google (
Google’s Page Rank algorithm gives more weight to popular webpages.
A webpage is considered popular if many other webpages link to it.
compare this to search engines built specially for weblogs; e.g., Cameron Marlow’s

21. social networks as technology
collaborative filtering and/or recommender systems; e.g., amazon.com’s feature: “People who bought this book also bought...”

22. social networks as popular culture
e.g., six degrees of kevin bacon
bacon number: definition
kevin bacon has a bacon number of 0
an actor, A, has a bacon number of 1 if s/he appeared in a movie with kevin bacon
an actor, B, has a bacon number of 2 if s/he appear in a movie with A
etc.
try this with the internet movie database: e.g.,
or, have it done automatically here, at the “oracle of bacon”:

23. social networks as popular culture
“Fixing” the networks; e.g., Google hacking
try the query “miserable failure” at google.com

24. social networks as popular culture
social software; e.g., friendster, orkut, tribe, etc.
recall the article by danah boyd: what happens to social networks when they are explicitly declared?
“[danah] emphasize[s] how users have repurposed the technology to present their identity and connect in personally meaningful ways while the architect works to define and regulate acceptable models of use.”
to understand “artificial” social networks we need to rethink the social scientific concepts of “equivalence,” “centrality,” even “node” and “link.”

25. Ben Discoe’s, Friendster Map
social networks as art
Ben Discoe’s, Friendster Map

26. social networks as art
Mark Lombardi, Global Networks

27. social networks as art
Official Computer Scene Sexchart

28. social networks as art
Josh On (Futurefarmers), They Rule

29. Jonah Peretti, Nike Sweatshop Email
social networks as art
Jonah Peretti, Nike Sweatshop

30. social networks as art
Warren Sack and Sawad Brooks
Warren Sack, Conversation Map

31. Angie Waller, Data Mining the Amazon
social networks as art
Angie Waller, Data Mining the Amazon

32. social networks as art
Thanks to Steve Dietz for these art links. See here for more examples:

33. visualizing (social) networks
See Martin Dodge’s “Cybergeography” website for many examples of how networks can be visualized:

34. mini-project two
create a friendster profile for yourself,
link to people who you know in this course and to everyone in your section, and
draw a social network of the relationships between you, your friendsters, and your friendsters’ friendsters.
due: monday, february 7th

35. next time
artificial intelligence