Social Science is Hard :). The fact that spam runs rampant on Twitter shouldn't be an indicator that its worth as an object of study is diminished. Just the opposite, I think. Email is arguably the spamiest of internet channels, precisely because it garners so much attention from its users. If people stop using it, or it does not play an important role as mediator of social relations, then yes, by all means, abandon. Otherwise, it calls for some very difficult choices regarding whether (a) you have to do some form of spam filtering before analyzing the network and/or (b) what the network analysis actually measures when some tweets/follows are clearly less meaningful than others... Best, Alex On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 9:27 AM, Barry Wellman <wellman@chass.utoronto.ca> wrote:
2 ways in which Spam can affect your Twitterology
1. Looking at an ego-centered personal community of tweeps when a large chunk of them are spammers will affect the size and network structure of your findings.
2. Looking at the geographical spread of tweeps (a whole network analysis), when a large chunk of spammers ....
Of course, YMMV
Barry Wellman _______________________________________________________________________
S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director Department of Sociology 725 Spadina Avenue, Room 388 University of Toronto Toronto Canada M5S 2J4 twitter:barrywellman http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman fax:+1-416-978-3963 Updating history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _______________________________________________________________________
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