Social Network Analysis

In the last three lectures, Pro. Chan demonstrated the definition of SNA. Social Network Analysis is the study of the pattern of interaction between actors, which is simplified as SNA. In SNA, Social network is formally defined as a set of social actors, or nodes, members that are connected by one or more types of relations.

We must admit that the mathematics is used for all kinds of areas. The knowledge of matrix is used for SNA to calculate some indexes to represent the features of a social network.

The matrix used in social network analysis is called the adjacency matrix or sociomatrix. The sociomatrix is applied to represent the interaction among all actors. Of course, according to the lecture, the same social network can be explained by several means, such as the matrix, relation graph or table. I will give the example to show different explanation means represent the same social network.

1、Matrix representation:

2、Graph representation:

3、Table representation:

In the lecture, Pro. Chan gave us two indexes of centrality and prestige. The centrality and the prestige are used to elaborate the actor’s interaction, importance and other features. As Pro. Chan said, actors with centrality are those that are extensively involved in relationships with other actors. Here the relationship with other actors is emphasized. Also, actor with prestige is the one who is the recipient of extensive ties. Here the recipient is emphasized. These are used to distinguished the concepts between the centrality and the prestige. And centrality contains degree centrality, closeness centrality and betweenness centrality. Prestige contains degree prestige, proximity prestige and rank prestige.

Usually a social network’s relationship graph can be converted into a matrix. And the centrality index and the prestige index can be worked out according to the matrix and some formulas. And then we can judge the features according to these values.

As said above, interdisciplinary application is important to solve the problem.

A Social Cloud

In the social networking course, we had talked about the social cloud definition, that is, a resource and service sharing framework utilizing relationships established between members of a social network.

As we know, the networking’s best contribution is to share the resource and service. However, the coming out of cloud definition extends this sharing and optimizes the networking. The social cloud exchanges point-to-point to multi-point sharing, which improves the efficiency of the networking and enlarges the networking resource storage.

In the course, we illustrate five Social Cloud application scenarios below. And I will mainly talk about the last two scenarios.

1)      A Social Computation Cloud: an ordinary resource sharing. For example, when we have a class in a computer classroom, the teacher make a common disc send the notes to us. We can copy the notes from our own computers through common sharing file.

2)      A Social Storage Cloud: online data storage. For example, we will send our photos to Renren or Qzone. Through this method, we don’t only share our photos to our friends, but also store these photos online to release our own computer’s storage zone.

3)      An Enterprise Social Cloud: enterprise networking. For example, many corporations and other community have their own official website. By this website, they can propagate themselves and gain access to a pool resources.

However, as far as I’m concerned, the most difficult applications to distinct are the last two ones.

4)      A Social Collaborative Cloud: collaborative. This cloud is used to share information and resources within diverse user communities. For example, the SCI and EI provide the users to search for the papers.

5)      A Social Cloud for Public Science: cooperative. This cloud is primarily used to solve scientific problems of community interest. For example, some websites, especial for software engineer, provide a platform to discuss with each other about the programming problems. Another example, in some studying English websites such as Hujiang English, we can find all kinds of English studying materials, find how to study English, find some partners to study with and some articles about studying English.

So as I explain above, the first three ones are easy to distinct, but the last two ones are difficult. And we must come back to the course to talk about the different definitions between collaboration and cooperation.

As Profess Chan notes, collaboration involves the “mutual engagement of participants in a coordinated effort” to work on the task. Group members actively interact with each other on a continual basis without major interruptions by a dictator. Therefore, as 4^th social collaborative cloud, we search for the papers to research and study and we needn’t communicate with these papers’ authors. We just use these papers as a reference, an auxiliary function.

However, cooperation is characterized by a division of tasks within a group. Group members work on segments of a larger task individually and compose the separate solutions afterwards. As 5^th social cloud of public science notes, we usually can find some partners to help us solve problems or study with us together through researching and studying. We don’t regard these answers as a reference, but as a part of our researching and studying.

In conclusion, we can distinct these five applications easily.

Psychology: Human Memory

In the social networking course, we have discussed about four basic principles of memory. In my student’s life, we’re always using our brain to try to memorize things and principles as many as possible. So I want to start with my memory experience in this blog.

 

Pro. Chan had provided us with four basic principles about memory below.

 

1、  Assumption of a limited capacity of the mental system.

Although we want to memorize everything, we know it is impossible. At the beginning of studying English, I felt it was difficult to memorize all English words. As spoken in this course, our memory capacity is limited. When the number of information attains some point, the brain is restricted to memorize other things. So if my restriction point is 100 words per day, I won’t be able to memorize more than 100 words. But according to my experience, this restriction will be improved if you are enthusiastic to exercise your memory capacity. And this capacity is actually related to individual’s talent. But I still believe that this capacity is limited in some range because everyone forget some things and vast of human’s memory will conform some regulation like Ebbinghaus Curve below.

 

2、There is a control mechanism to government the encoding, transformation, processing, storage, retrieval and utilization of information.

This principle actually describes that it’s more difficult to complete a new task than a routine task. And more processing power is required in a new environment. It’s easy to understand this principle. When we do one thing again and again, we will try to memorize it again and again. So it has more chances to be processed in our brain and more probability to be memorized. In the process of repeating, we can find easier way to complete task and know all the steps by the right order to deal with this type task. So experience is important to encounter with the task and at this,  experience is equal to former memory.

 

3、 There is a two-way flow of information as we try to make sense of the world around us.

The cognition from the senses and information we have stored in memory helps us memorize some things. It’s easy to understand. The things relative to our life is easy to find the regulation to have a long-term memory.

 

4、Human organism has been genetically prepared to process and organize information in specific ways.

In the course, Pro. Chan made an example about infants. A non-experienced infant always behave differently from adults. When a strange human comes out before infants, they will have attention to his face at first. In contrast, an adult will pay attention to other parts of the human according to his own interest, probably such as hair, cloth, dress or shoes.

 

Human memory research is important to social networking. In order to create a popular website, the question what can attract the users and stimulates users to memorize the website is required to solve. 

Crowdsourcing: for grades or for money?

In the lecture 2, Pro. Chan provided us with many websites to know more about social networking. In the past, I used Chinese websites to satisfy my requirement more frequently, but knew little about foreign websites. When Facebook, Twitter and YouTube became a lifestyle for people over the world, many famous Chinese websites came out, such as Renren, Tencent, sina, etc.

 

Pro. Chan introduced the definition of Crowdsourcing, that is, a crowd of users come up with their strategies to help the asker to solve his problem and maybe the asker will choose the best strategy to pay for. Of course, the method to attract users to answer the question is to provide the award, but this award usually includes two types: the money and the grades.

 

In the examples of BurdaStyle and Witmart that is often called as Zhubajie by Chinese people, money is just used to inspire many users to provide their strategies as award. To some degree, this is a type of e-commerce. Users sell their knowledge but not an object in contrast to eBay and Taobao. But it is easy to understand why users have passion to participate in this bargain to earn money. Maybe there are some people to have a life by answering questions in these websites and I think I will call them Brainstorming-Businessman.   

 

Additionally, for some people, it seems difficult to understand why some users want to earn grades in the website by answering questions. These grades can’t bring any delicious food, any beautiful cloth, any their favorite objects and even a blank paper. Why such many users are voluntary to answer questions due to the grades?

 

First of all, the grades is relative to users’ level in the website. More grades means users can own more priorities as a VIP and even can use these grades to exchange presents. Zhidao.Baidu is the best example of this. http://zhidao.baidu.com/shop/?TabIndex=1#dhzq This link shows that users can use the grades to exchange these presents and at the same time they must satisfy the level,  which is relative to the grades, and the adopted ratio. So if you want to get these presents, you can exchange your grades to them. However, I don’t think this is the most significant aspect to inspire users to participate in the activity.

 

From my perspective, using the grades to exchange the idea with others can absorb more users. I have registered an ID in Zhidao.Baidu for several years. In the beginning, I found many people sent their questions and then got the answers from others. So I sent a question that I can’t find the answer from my surrounding friends in this website. But several days later, no one responded to me. I didn’t know what happened until one person left words “ No grades, no response.” From then on, I feel it is important to achieve grades to get solutions for me. So I must help others in order to earn grades and then provided these grades to earn solutions. From this example, this type of award can stimulate users to join in the ask-answer activity. Thereby, it is possibly the reason why Zhidao.Baidu can be so popular.

 

Finally, it is just a method to enjoy oneself. So far, I have gotten more than two thousand grades in the Zhidao.Baidu. Some friends will ask me why I have so much passion to answer others’ questions and it’s really because of earning grades to make others answer my question. I will say no. Just when I have interest in some topics, I will search for them and will look at others’ questions. Sometimes I want to illustrate my opinion and just will write my idea for the asker. Often the true feeling can get the asker’s favor and he will give the award for my answer. So sometimes the grades is equal to fun.   

 

 

In my idea, the crowdsourcing websites without any payment still own the potential to attract users to participate in. So this is the special fascination of social networking.