Today, I talked about my research at U of T's CS undergrad open house. I explained about how with all the social media out there like blogs, videoblogs, wikis, tagging, etc., it is difficult to discover at a high level the social interaction that is happening. How do I know that I may want to subscribe to this blog vs. another blog? I need a way to figure out how to compare between the two blogs. I might want to subscribe to a particular blog because it provides me a sense of community, that I have feelings of membership, of belonging with the group. I feel that I can exert an emotional connection with others on the blog. People join sites like Facebook or MySpace, because well we as human beings are social, we want to share things, we want to talk, we want to make friends, we want to social network. This presents opportunities to discover what is that behaviour, and how to characterize it.
My research deals with that, how to find a sense of community in social media, and I gave an example from my paper showing a diagram about how a social network can be created from the blog interactions, and then we can filter that network using structures and social network analysis in order to find communities. Then, I had a booth in the atrium after to discuss about more of my research and give a short demo.
On Technorati: U of T, undergrad, openhouse
1 comment:
Great stuff Alvin, I wish I had been to see your presentation. I need to tell you more about my blogger neighbour and the community she is involved in. It'd be a great one to analyze as it's very active with loyal followers/participants. bgj
Post a Comment