Re: [Air-L] Definition of on-line community through homophily
Dear Alexander, Caroline, and others, I have a paper that runs through these definitions and argues that (some type of) online communities should be defined by common interest. You, Alexander, may want to shoot at it for your purpose: Matzat, U. (2004). "Cooperation and Community on the Internet: Past Issues and Present Perspectives for theoretical-empirical Internet Research" in: Analyse & Kritik, 26, 1: 63-90. (pre-print at my website) To be honest, I can't follow your argument. Maybe this is just a misunderstanding? But why does this type of definition imply a high degree of homophily? If you look at a "classical" online community, for instance a discussion fora about cancer, then there is a common interest (discussion about cancer). But there does not have to be a high degree of homophily. Members can have different educational, ethnic, and social backgrounds. Could you clarify? --------> So, my arguement is that community should be defined by interaction, not by some declarative features like interests, profiles, communities, etc. --------> I agree that for some other types of online communities ("social online communities") other criteria should be taken into account as well. See the article. Uwe ---------> ---------> Semenov Alexander semenoffalex at googlemail.com Wed Oct 6 01:46:52 PDT 2010 Previous message: [Air-L] Annette Markham guest professor in Aarhus Next message: [Air-L] Definition of on-line community through homophily Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello, everybody. I'm looking for papers, that define on-line communities through common itnerests. My idea is to prove, that many so-called communities in LiveJournals are not such, because there is too few discussions and other kind of interaction. So that joining such a community is mostly a demonstration of taste and part of self-presentation in their profiles. In order to prove that I want to run a PCA on the data from one of such communities like in Paolilo, Wright and Mercure's article ( http://www.scribd.com/doc/353326/The-Social-Semantics-of-LiveJournal-FOAF- Structure-and-Change-from-2004-to-2005). Their data show that there is no correlation between interests and friends and I understand it as lack of homophily. (Am I right?) So, that is my working hypothesis I want to prove. That's why I need some sources. I looked through Barry Wellman's works but he uses another approach. -- Alexander Semenov. MA student Faculty of Sociology Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (MSSES) http://www.msses.ru/English/index.html Graduate Student in Sociology at State University - Higher School of Economics http://www.hse.ru/eng ======================================= Uwe Matzat Sociology School of Innovation Science Eindhoven University of Technology P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven The Netherlands --------------- phone: + 31 40 247-8392 email: umatzat /"at"/ gmail.com http://umatzat.net =======================================
Hello, Uwe. I skimed your article and it seemed very useful to me. I'll read it more thoroughly later. Now I'll try to clarify my point. At first, LJ-community "sociolog" doesn't present a "third place" for sociological debates and conversations. Simply because people post there mostly announcements and do it quite seldom. I'm not talking about comments. You can check it yourself: (http://community.livejournal.com/sociolog/) At second, I think, that people, who decided to join this community should have at least some common characteristics (may be not related to sociology) which we can obtain either from their "interests" section in the blog info page or from their tags, which could be mined too. That's why I expect to find at least some correlation in this features, so I need to check this hypothesis. And the only way to do it that came to my mind is the method from the article I've mentioned in the beginning. Perhaps I'll add something to my arguement after reading your article. Best regards, Alexander. 2010/10/7 Uwe Matzat <umatzat@gmail.com>
Dear Alexander, Caroline, and others,
I have a paper that runs through these definitions and argues that (some type of) online communities should be defined by common interest. You, Alexander, may want to shoot at it for your purpose:
Matzat, U. (2004). "Cooperation and Community on the Internet: Past Issues and Present Perspectives for theoretical-empirical Internet Research" in: Analyse & Kritik, 26, 1: 63-90. (pre-print at my website)
To be honest, I can't follow your argument. Maybe this is just a misunderstanding? But why does this type of definition imply a high degree of homophily? If you look at a "classical" online community, for instance a discussion fora about cancer, then there is a common interest (discussion about cancer). But there does not have to be a high degree of homophily. Members can have different educational, ethnic, and social backgrounds. Could you clarify?
--------> So, my arguement is that community should be defined by interaction, not by some declarative features like interests, profiles, communities, etc. -------->
I agree that for some other types of online communities ("social online communities") other criteria should be taken into account as well. See the article.
Uwe
---------> ---------> Semenov Alexander semenoffalex at googlemail.com Wed Oct 6 01:46:52 PDT 2010
Previous message: [Air-L] Annette Markham guest professor in Aarhus Next message: [Air-L] Definition of on-line community through homophily Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]
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Hello, everybody. I'm looking for papers, that define on-line communities through common itnerests. My idea is to prove, that many so-called communities in LiveJournals are not such, because there is too few discussions and other kind of interaction. So that joining such a community is mostly a demonstration of taste and part of self-presentation in their profiles. In order to prove that I want to run a PCA on the data from one of such communities like in Paolilo, Wright and Mercure's article ( http://www.scribd.com/doc/353326/The-Social-Semantics-of-LiveJournal-FOAF- Structure-and-Change-from-2004-to-2005<http://www.scribd.com/doc/353326/The-Social-Semantics-of-LiveJournal-FOAF-%0AStructure-and-Change-from-2004-to-2005> ). Their data show that there is no correlation between interests and friends and I understand it as lack of homophily. (Am I right?) So, that is my working hypothesis I want to prove. That's why I need some sources. I looked through Barry Wellman's works but he uses another approach. -- Alexander Semenov. MA student Faculty of Sociology Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (MSSES) http://www.msses.ru/English/index.html
Graduate Student in Sociology at State University - Higher School of Economics http://www.hse.ru/eng
======================================= Uwe Matzat Sociology School of Innovation Science Eindhoven University of Technology P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven The Netherlands --------------- phone: + 31 40 247-8392 email: umatzat /"at"/ gmail.com http://umatzat.net =======================================
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-- Alexander Semenov. MA student Faculty of Sociology Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (MSSES) http://www.msses.ru/English/index.html Graduate Student in Sociology at State University - Higher School of Economics http://www.hse.ru/eng
participants (2)
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Semenov Alexander -
Uwe Matzat