Analysis and Mining of Social networks and Blogs
All kinds of social media and networked culture theory – Journal Club – 25/03/2011
Mar 28th
After recently joining the LiSC Friday afternoon research group and eating all the cake for the past few weeks I was invited to give a talk in relation to my PhD project and give some theoretical/critical insight into the development of online social networking practices and related networked socio-economic trends. I guess this contributed some degree of an interdisciplinary flavour, since I come from a cultural studies/media studies background. My PhD is focussed on how forms of subjectivity (embodied in connecting, producing, performing, playing, communicating, tagging, uploading, ‘poking’, and ‘liking’ in the social media platform Facebook) may be being governed, conditioned, structured, captured and modulated through the technological architecture of such sites, representing a critique of wider developments to highly mediated, networked cultures in the context of global capitalism. I have been collaborating with members of LiSC to develop an application to collect data from Facebook users for my study, which is how I came to be involved in the research group.
I began my talk by discussing some of the recent work on online social media, and it was interesting to see a number of apparent crossovers here. I gave a brief discussion about the historical development of capitalism then attempted to map out three key areas which I feel are important for critically understanding networked technology and practices: Identity, Power and Labour. I delved into a broad range of critical theory and philosophy, in particular Gilles Deleuze’s work on ‘control societies’, the ‘dividual’ self, ‘de-territorialisation’ and ‘assemblages’, as well issues of ‘affective/immaterial labour’ and ‘networked ontology’ (which really warranted more time to explain in fine detail but hopefully the group found the overview of these concepts in someway interesting and/or useful). These core issues make up the body of my literature review and provide the historical, cultural and critical background from which my study will emerge; as this process is far from complete, my talk painted a vague picture of the theoretical environment in this area, perhaps opening avenues for future research.
I think I will reward everyone for sitting through that session with some assortment of cake and nibbles for next week…
Recently Funded ENACT project – enhancing social networks to augment cognitive behavioural therapy
Jul 29th
I have just realised that we have made no mention to the funding that we recently won from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Here’s some official information on what is involved:
Dr. Shaun Lawson, Reader at the Lincoln School of Computing Science, leads the ENACT project team which has secured just under £500K from the EPSRC for a 28-month study to explore the effectiveness of online social networks in improving the uptake, adherence and completion rates of computerised cognitive behavioural therapy. From the EPSRC’s press summary:
The primary hypothesis of the ENACT project is that Computerised Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CCBT) programmes which replicate the interactive structure of online social media will be more effective at engendering user uptake and engagement than CCBT programmes that replicate the structure of traditional one-to-one therapy sessions. In order to examine the effects of enhancing CCBT with elements of online social technology, ENACT will concentrate on the development and enhancement of a CCBT ‘package’ for the treatment of insomnia. Users of the final application will: 1) be able to interact confidentially with and receive support from other users of the service; 2) be able report completion of daily activities via Online Social Networking and mobile phone applications; 3) receive feedback in an engaging manner on targets set and met; and 4) will generally be supported in their completion of the treatment package in a manner that reflects their usage of online social technology, and which fits conveniently into their daily liefstyle.
The multi-disciplinary nature of ENACT reflects the University’s research strengths in both Computing and Healthcare: Prof. Niro Siriwardena, Foundation Professor in Primary Care at Lincoln, brings his national expertise on primary care improvement to the project. In particular, ENACT will draw on Niro’s work on sleep disorders and their treatment, which was developed in the REST (Resources for Effective Sleep Treatment) project funded by the Health Foundation.
Dr. Kevin Morgan from Loughborough University and Dr. Kate Cavanagh from University of Sussex provide expertise on Human-Computer Interaction and Cognitive science applications in ICT.
The EPSRCs official description of the project.
The Universitys Press release
CHI 2010 debriefing
May 2nd
Despite Volcanoes, alleged arrests at the airport and shooting incidents, we have made it back safe from CHI2010, which was recently held in Atlanta. The conference itself was of its usual excellent standard and was a fantastic opportunity to meet similarly minded people.
Over the course of four days we presented one short paper (here), two alt.chi papers (here and here) and two posters (here and here). Ben’s short paper looking into social game engagement was nominated for best paper and drew a great deal of interest from attendees.
The two alt.chi papers were extremely well attended and we are delighted with the response of the audience to both papers. Conor described how behavioural psychology should be employed when designing feedback in persuasive technology, while Conor and Ben jointly presented the intentionally provocative Blowtooth paper.
Interestingly, Blowtooth has recently generated a lot of comments both on twitter (#blowtooth) and on blogs and online magazines (the escapist game politics gpara.com flytrap games). Remember you can check out the game on http://ww.blowtooth.com
Thanks to everyone who we talked to over the course of the conference and see you next year!
conor
CHI 2010
Feb 21st
We are delighted to have a strong representation at CHI 2010, with five separate pieces of work that have been accepted to various tracks of the conference. CHI 2010 takes place from April 10th – 15th in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. CHI (ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems) is the premier international conference for the field of human-computer interaction. CHI 2010 looks outward to the human experience of computing in the world. “We are HCI†challenges our community to embrace the diversity of HCI in the world and to exclaim our commitment as a profession to empower people from all walks of life.
Ben will present a main conference track paper on social network analysis entitled “Improving Social Game Engagement on Facebook through Enhanced Socio-Contextual Information.” We will present two papers at the alt.chi track of the conference. The first of these examines pervasive gaming in high security environments and is based around an initial evaluation of the Blowtooth game (see http://www.blowtooth.com). The second of our alt.chi papers deals with the possible advantages of analysing feedback delivered by persuasive applications in a way that is influenced by the findings of behavioural science. This paper is entitled “There’s a Monster in My Kitchen: Using Aversive Feedback to Motivate Behaviour Change.”
The two remaining contributions are Work-in-Progress poster presentations. The first of these presents a social tagging-based methodology for determining content of food photographs, while the second, presented by Derek Foster, details the results of a pilot study of an application that combines the use of pedometer data and social networks to motivate users to increase the amount of exercise.
PASION Fruit available to play free online!
Jan 27th
The latest social game developed by LiSC as part of the PASION Project is now available in an open public trial:
Go to http://www.pasionfruit.eu to play, for free.
We are studying the social interactions of players in social games to get an insight into how social communication is changed when mediated by technology.
PASION Fruit is a game where players maintain fruit gardens and compete to collect the most diverse range of fruit.
However, certain fruit can only be found in certain countries, so while in the UK you can easily find Apples and Pears, for Lemons and Grapes you will need to travel to Italy. Sending fruit a long way has a negative impact in terms of CO2 generated so you must balance diversity with environmental costs!
Exchanging fruit with other players is via gifts, so you must be careful to choose appropriate fruit gifts to the right players in order to get a good gift in return.
The game is free and open to the public. It can be played with a modern web browser. You can also optionally use your Facebook account to log in.
For more information and to explore the game without commitment, please visit the site at:
http://www.pasionfruit.eu
http://www.pasionfruit.eu
Since the game is part of a scientific experiment, trial coordinators will contact players directly with questionnaires via email after the trial is complete in February.
Please feel free to pass on this invitation to any colleagues and friends to which you feel the game may be of interest. For more information, please contact Ben Kirman (bkirman@lincoln.ac.uk) or Shaun Lawson (slawson@lincoln.ac.uk).
PASION Fruit has been developed by the Lincoln Social Computing Research Centre (LiSC) within the Faculty of Media, Humanities & Technology as part of the PASION project. PASION (Psychologically Augmented Social Interactions Over Networks) is a major European project involving the University of Lincoln and 17 other partner organisations that is investigating the social aspects of communication that is mediated by technology.