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List of Social Network Courses in Europe

One particularly useful source of information that I draw on frequently is the SOCNET mailing list. Sometime towards the end of last year Christopher Tunnard collected information on the different types of social network courses being offered internationally. He consequently collected the data in a spreadsheet and you can now browse all courses by institution, instructor, category and name. I think this is pretty helpful when you’re trying to locate a course near you in a particular academic field. So, if you’re based in Europe and you’re interested in organization studies, psychology and communications – just like myself – you may find the following courses insightful:

Aarhus University: Introductory Social Network Analysis & Organizational Network Analysis

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona: Theory, Methods and Applications of Social Networks (Summer School)

University of Essex: Introduction & Advanced Social Network Analysis (Summer School)

University of Glasgow: Assessing the Impact of Social Networks on Organizational Performance

University of Greenwich: Business Networks

Universität Trier: Sum­mer School on So­ci­al Net­work Ana­ly­sis

Tilburg University: Interorganizational Relationships

Call for Talks: InterFace 2011

And here’s another recommendation: This time it’s not for a journal submission, but instead for an event that I find particularly interesting due to the format chosen by the organizers. The InterFace 2011 will take place this summer in London and is a mix of short PhD talks (2 minutes), workshops (including SNA) and an unconference (see Wikipedia article if you haven’t heard the term before). The InterFace is supposed to bring together researchers from the fields of technology and humanities. Deadline for submission of abstracts is March 11, 2011.

Call for Talks

A core component of the programme will be a lightning talks session in which each participant will make a two-minute presentation on their research. The session will be lively and dynamic. Each presentation must be exactly two minutes long, making use of necessary, interesting, appropriate, or entertaining visual or sound aids, and condensing a whole Ph.D’s worth of ideas and work into this short slot.

Participants will be able to join workshops in:

  • network analysis;
  • bibliographic software;
  • data visualisation;
  • linked data.

There will be talks on:

  • user studies and social research;
  • discourse analysis in science and technology;
  • how to get your work published;
  • how to apply for research funding.

There will also be two keynote talks given by speakers whose work marks the leading edge of technology in scholarship and practice. The speakers will be:

  • Steven Scrivener (University of Arts London): Design research and creative production

Finally, the symposium will conclude with an unconference; a participatory, collaborative, and informal event in which the form and content is decided on by participants as it unfolds and in which discussion and production is emphasised over presentation and analysis. Participants may wish to share their own skills, learn a new skill, establish and develop a collaborative project, or hold a focused discussion.

via interface2011.org.uk

Call for Papers: Methodological approaches to the study of virtual environments…

…and online social networks

I just came across an interesting Call for Papers by the Graduate Journal of Social Science. As the title of this post indicates, it deals with methodological approaches to the study of virtual environments and online social networks. It therefore addresses one of the key questions I’ve been asking myself since I started my PhD. To my knowledge, no such compilation exists to date. The most accessible text that I have come across regarding this topic is Bernie Hogan’s Analyzing Social Networks via the Internet. If you’re interested, please have a look at the details below. Deadline for submission is March 15, 2011. I’m certainly looking forward to having a look at the full issue.

This special issue aims at mapping some of the methodological approaches to the study of virtual environments, and welcomes both theoretical and empirical analyses that address them. The interest here is in what methods graduate researchers choose to use, the problems they face in trying to use them and the ways in which these methods are being adapted in relation to these virtual sites of study. Graduate students doing empirical work on virtual worlds and online social networks from all disciplines are strongly encouraged to submit papers dealing with the processes of choosing, applying and critically evaluating their methods.

While we expect contributions to vary according to the particular focus of investigation, questions such as the following may be relevant: What are the advantages and disadvantages of these methods? Are such methods developed specifically for the study of virtual worlds and/or online social networks, or are they adaptations of traditional research methods in social sciences? Are there specific disciplines, theories, or academic frameworks that offer more suitable insights regarding such methods- or can using them suggest limiting the scope of this ‘new’ research environment?

Authors are encouraged to submit papers addressing questions such as:

  • How to choose a suitable method for the study of virtual worlds and/ or online social networks?
  • Methods for exploring the social and cultural aspects of virtual worlds and/ or online social networks.
  • Methods for exploring the technical aspects of virtual worlds and/ or online social networks.
  • Criteria for evaluating research on virtual worlds and/ or online social networks.
  • Simulations as research methods: problems, recommendations, evaluation.
  • Methods for collaborative research in virtual environments and/ or online social networks.
  • Ethical issues.
  • Immersion: do we need to be users of virtual worlds/ online social networks to study them?
via gjss.org

Hogan, B. (2008) Analyzing Social Networks via the Internet. In: N.Fielding, R.Lee and G.Blank (eds) The Handbook of Online Research Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Web 2.0 finds its payday by @McKQuarterly

I’ve commented on the McKinsey Web 2.0 surveys in an earlier blog post. McKinsey just published the outcome of this year’s research, comparing internally networked, externally networked and fully networked organizations. The result: Fully networked organizations perform better in terms of market share and profit margins. Study participants named faster access to knowledge, increased marketing effectiveness and reduced communication costs as some of the main advantages of technology adoption. The authors, Bughin and Chui, also report that more employees within the same organization are now making use of more Web 2.0 technologies compared to previous years. Positive feedback loops seem to facilitate organizational learning. McKinsey predicts that investments in these technologies are bound increase. This is in line with Gartner’s expectations.

There was one finding that I thought was particularly noteworthy: Self-reported market leadership correlated negatively with externally networked organizations. Market leaders tend to focus on internal collaboration, but shield themselves from external ties. The authors of the study suggest that this is to do with maintaining their leadership position. Market challengers, on the contrary, are more focused on external uses of Web 2.0 technologies to win clients over. Would you agree?

Building Theories from Case Study Research: A Mind Map

I am planning to use a case study approach for my next piece of research. Some of the key references for this type of study are Yin’s (2008) book on design and methods as well as Eisenhardt’s (1989) article on theory building. I’ve created a mind map of the latter article for personal use, however I’m happy to share it with you. I hope you do find it useful. If you’ve got suggestions for improvements, please drop me a line.

References:

  • Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). Building theories from case study research. Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 532-550.
  • Yin, R. K. (2008). Case study research: Design and methods. Sage Publications, Inc.