Week8...

There are a lot of network theories summarized in this week's reading, that are somewhat social psychology oriented rather than sociology. I felt it as a kind of turnpike for this course. I took particular interest in the cognitive approaches, which basically emphasize how people make sense of such structures. Being from an Asian culture where there is actually a stronger sense of social connectedness than the "west", it interests me how social networks are held together by the viewpoints of the 'nodes'. Of course it happens that in many cases, the cognized network by an individual in it does not fully correpond to the actual structure (e.g. exaggerated feeling of having democracy, feeling more socially active than one actually is, etc), and making people recognize those differences can function as an motivation for change. I like the problem settings of Gramsciin which he asks why a revolution didn't occur, and eventually invented the concept of hegemony; Implemeting theories of cognitive social structures, even (quantitavely?) observable data could be considered. Focusing on communication networks, it could be also helpful in finding out how Internet-based networks such the "blogosphere" is actually being perceived as an tool for bringing about changes. However the tricky thing is, that to achive those goals the comparison BETWEEN the cogized network of each individuals(nodes) and the actual structure of the network must be conducted. But in many cases, the non-surface networks can be explored only through the information reported by the nodes themselves, and then it would get mixed up. Methodological questions on how to obtain observational data is still giving me headaches(and probably will for the rest of my academic life, I guess).

Amy's comments

Sorry, but I can't get my weekly comments to show up on my personal class blog. Here they are:

Monge, P. and Contractor, N. (2003). Theories of Communication Networks. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

It comes as no surprise to realize that the chapters for this week also contain an incredible amount of valuable information. There are really great summaries here on embededness, (mutual and reciprocal relationships), collective action theories, contagion theories (how attitudes and behaviors are dissemination through a network), semantic theories, transactive memory theory, exchange theory, and, of particular interest to me in my own work, homophily. Seeing as how I study the communications among individuals with emotional disorders, I like the idea of homophily, that we select individuals for our networks who are similar. This reduces the psychological discomfort that can arise form emotional or cognitive inconsistency. I also find in my work studying how these individuals use the Internet, that the dual effects hypothesis may be very useful. This argues that he internet can simultaneously enlarge and shrink communication networks. The notion that social networks play a buffering role in the effects of stress on mental well being will also be particularly useful for me.

Question: As I commented last week, I am very intrigued by the authors’ premise. I like the idea of being able to study a communications network in its entirety, rather than its tiny separate pieces. As a “numbers geek” I find some comfort in statistics amid the confusion. I like being able to generalize out from one specific type of situation to larger patterns of networks. However, I’m still not clear on exactly how we do this. Where is our data coming from, and how to we compute it?

(Jumping over Week6 (Yom Kippur), it's my reading comment for week7. )

This week's reading deals with a systematic methodology to cope with social networks. It is less of an argument, but a very nicely put way of introducing the concepts and implications of network analysis, with a explicit emphasis on communication. Thus, following thoughts regard not particularily Monge & Contractors book but rather the research approach of social network analysis itself.

When I took the social psychology class in my undergrad, I had an opportunity to replicate the Leavitt experiment(p17). The results and their implications were very clear: the organizational form of communication network affects the group and each member in their performances and satisfaction. This being an experiment, you didn't 'discover' patterns, but 'set' them. So basically, it was about looking at what network patterns do. On the other hand, the network analysis we are talking about is on observing groups and then discovering patterns(In fact discovering multiple plains of patterns, via multiple theoretical approach). So it is much harder to find out what the network pattern found actually does. You can describe where the central clusters are, how multiple planes of media spheres intersect to bulid closer webs, you find out who the real gatekeepers are... but how do you find out 'what' those patterns imply? Maybe it's all there in the explanation and I just need to finish reading into the latter chapters of the book.

Another thing I cannot but keep in mind is that most of the methods explained within the reading is about a single time frame. I wonder if there are models and research methods that deals with the dynamic change of such social networks. Why and how do networks changeover time, and what can be done to interfere in that process? In real world words, how does a new member get effectively into a exsting network? How does a authoritan network renovate itself to become a decentralized one? How does a highly democratic network transform itself to a fascistic whole? If anyone can recommend some works on those areas, I'll be grateful.

All of the readings this week indicate to one point: media shapes (at least parts of) our world, instead of simply transmitting messages. Well, there's also the commoness that they don't focus as so much on OK-so-what-should-we-do-about-it, but still a important step to discuss our keyword of this week, namely "media ecology".

To confess, before I actually started to join this academic field quite a few years ago, I thought Innis/McLuhan's works are the "Bible" for media studies. Such is the popularity, in most part due to their intuitive work to suggest media as a driving force for societal forms and their evolution. To put short, they suggest that the way we communicate is the way we have been forming societies, and we communicate via media. Meyerowitz's piece develops the McLuhanian vision into further detail. How electronical media shapes and changes roles in a society (BTW, I discovered only when I was halfway through reading it that this book was written back in 85, and he didn't have "new" new media such as Internet in mind...). Then we have Gitlin, the prominent figure in "framing theory", tell us how we are literally overflooded with media. So to put their suggestions together, media shapes society and it is more than full of it. Not too hard to agree upon. Notwithstanding methodological shortcomings, but Meyerowitz already talked about it.

Certainly I agree, but the question whether it functions as an "ecology" does require a lot more thoughts. I don't think that one call it an 'ecology' only because it is all around us. To call it an ecology, it should at least 1) have an self-sustaining system that's formed on a fully cycling chain (not necessarily one-way), and 2) power stuructures that can bring or break the balance should be present; 3) And our lives - or social behaviour, in Meyerozitz's terms - should be part of that process. In McLuhan's pieces media is a driving force, but little is discussed on why new media technologies came forth and were chosen to be implemented(I wonder what his answers would have been, if he knew the fact that the movable type was invented in Korea 200 years before Gutenberg, but didn't have such grand impacts on society as in the latter). media 'forms' our societies and behaviour, but how do we 'form' media in a specific social setting? I think that is the other half of the cycle to explore into the ecology question.