Social Networks & Social Research

Posted by: kegill on: 1 May 2008

In: Social Networks| Teaching| Twitter| presentations
Comment!

How are social networks and social network sites being used by researchers? Guest lecture in Hanson’s COM529 class. [Two addenda!]

Not in the slides — but don’t forget email lists and blog posts/comments!

Screen capture of Twhirl.

Links from the presentation (and a couple that I may have forgotten!)

Other Resources:

Clay Shirky’s talk at Web 2.0 (mp4)
Twitter HashTags for emergency coordination and disaster relief
Using twitter as a research tool

Addendum 1
Hanson suggested I talk about Twitter genres, something I blogged about last month. Read the post and tell me what you think!

I also have an evolving Twitter resources page.

Addendum 2
After a quick look at y’alls tweets, I can see that most are clearly in Genre (1) ! And (almost) no one seems to be using @screenname to talk directly to folks. Why?

Hanson suggested I recommend people to follow on Twitter. Here goes a list of people/orgs to consider (alpha order – I know most of these people).

Scott Beale – BayAreaTechie. Laughing Squid is a hosting company and “an online resource for art, culture & technology” – Scott is also known for his photography. Moderately high volume; Scott would be my #2 if I were going to follow only two high volume Tweet-ers.
David Cohn – journo
Dan Gillmor – journo
Guy Kawasaki – startUps/former Apple evangelist. If I were to follow only one high-volume poster, it would be Guy, and not because of his Apple connection!
JD Lasica – journo/educator
Mindy McAdams – journo/educator
Chris Pirillo – techGeek. Another high volume poster; Seattle.
Howard Rheingold – author/educator (Smart Mobs)
Steve Rubel – organizational communications, impact of digital technologies, marketing & PR. Very good signal-to-noise ratio
Robert Scoble – commGeek. 2nd most popular person on Twitter; recommend reading blog over Tweets because of @ volume (lots of noise)
Evan Williams – founder.

Arstechnica – newsfeed Excellent.
BBC – news feed
Breaking News Alerts – online breaking news
DowningStreet – British PM
NextNewsRoom – Next News Room project (education)
NewsTools2008 – example of a conference feed (check it out, the conference ended Fri). “The Journalism That Matters collaborative [curates] NewsTools2008 at Yahoo”
NY Times – news feed
Barack Obama – watch how a political campaign is using Twitter
Seattle Weather
TechMeme – news feed. Excellent.