It Is Time For "Understanding"

We are now standing on the top of a new wave of information revolution. Everything on the Internet have been gradually combine d together. The introduction of Siri has revealed the true power of artificial intelligence, the emergence of semantic search engine has indicated the start of the evolution from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, all these current developments of information technologies, without any exception, have shared the same target, "make our computer and network more intelligent". But how? The first step is to let ourselves be truly understood by the computer. This is also the basic goal of Social Network Analysis.

Social Network Analysis is the study of social relations among a set of actors. The essential difference between network analysis and other approaches to social science is the focus on relationships between actors rather than the attributes of individual actors. Social analysis takes a global view on the whole social structures based on the belief that different patterns of relationships emerge from individual connectivity and that the presence of such patterns have substantial effects on the network and its members. In particular, the network structures and patterns provide us opportunities to understand, calculate or even forecast some certain behaviors in a computational way.

However, although the target of Social Network Analysis is quite easy to be understood, its utilization in real life situation is still remain vague for most of people. Here I will introduce a real case to illustrate the value of Social Network Analysis. It is called "Early Warning Social Listening".

In daily lives, we have to frequently confront the disasters brought by both nature and human being, for example epidemics is one of the most detrimentals. However, even though we are always keeping in mind the necessity to control it as soon as possible, the result of our emergency measures is always not as good as we have expected. It's usually too late for us to realize the emergence of that kind of disaster. Once noticed, the infection usually has taken hold in a sizable proportion of the population and is spreading at geometric rates. The right time for crises prevention has passed, and all of our responding actions have been forced into a passive way.

Could we find a better approach to get the warning earlier? The method could come from Social Network Analysis. In a study of Harvard undergraduateds, Christakis and Fowler, two scientists in the field of social network science, have predicted the outbreak of the H1N1 influenza virus on campus in 2009 after analyzing the unusual behavior patterns among the social network. During the analysis, they found that fact that there were an increasing number of initially active nodes become reticence in a short period of time and at the same time many "stranger" nodes get new connection to these certain group of nodes. And finally, with a further investment, they found the reason of this usual pattern and effectively avoid a disaster.

Up till now, the SNA has still remained in an early stage. Do you have any ideas about the SNA's utilization in real life situation? Expecting for your response.

Social Cloud Computing ----- a Group Stimulant

From the article, we could easily figure out the landscape of Social Cloud Computing. Evolved from the simple idea of establishing a resource and service sharing utilizing relationships established between members of a social network, Social Cloud Computing has revealed its power in many different forms, including Social Computation Cloud, Social Storage Cloud, Social Collaborative Cloud, and Social Cloud for Public Science and even Enterprise. 

And also in the two activities assigned, we could also notice the significant impacts brought by Social Cloud technology, which enormously affects the behavior patterns among both individual and collaborative works.

In activity one, each answer was settled or even more exactly called briefly highlighted simply according to the questions designed, without any personal viewpoint and critical thinking being involved or being intended to be involved. However, in comparison, when the task moved on to the activity two and was transformed into a collaborated way, the pattern of cognitive process was completely recomposed into a different way. The active interactions as well as arguments between each members resulted in a positive motivation and stimulus to "step further" in our original ideas and thinkings. A striking inspiration from others, a comprehensive comparison between your our idea and other people's thinking, a drastic debate between you and your partner, and a tough defense of your own perspective, all these processes provide us a better chance to look into the question in a more insightful viewpoint, which finally contribute to a thorough understanding and more reasonable answer reflecting group intelligence rather than that from any individuals.

Social Cloud Computing is definitely not just a way to facilitate our group work, but a effective stimulant to improve such collaboration.

Why We Are So "Angry" in Social Network?

In lecture 3 & 4, we mainly focused on the role that phycology and cognition theory play in online social network. The content has been divided into two relative parts, and each of them provided an in-depth answer towards the following question: 1) How do people “deal with” the information having been collected? ; 2) How does the cognition process affect the construction of social network?

From the conceptual introduction in the 3 & 4 lecture as well as the real-life experience about social networking website, we could realize the strong connection between the psychology and the online behaviors. And we could also discover a series of different behavior patterns which distinguish the online behavior from that in real-life situations. Specifically, I want to leave my focal point on Cyber Disinhibition on social network.

Have you ever suffered from the guilty when you post hostile comments on forum or other social networking websites, like Facebook and twitter, under bad mood? If the answer is “yes”, you could probably wonder why you are so irritable on the Internet despite your good-temper in daily life. That is Cyber Disinhibition. Sometimes referred to as "flaming," Cyber Disinhibition is a phenomenon that can occur when a person is upset and sends an angry or other type of emotionally-charged messages on social networking website. The problem comes from the fact that all of these negative behaviors happens much more frequently than negative face-to-face interaction. Why we speak more "directly" on social networks?

The first reason is the anonymity on social network. When you move around the social network website, especially like forum and twitter, most of the people you encounter could probably be someone without any connection to you in real-life situation. If you wish, you can hide your identity, at least your real name, which works wonders for the disinhibition effect. When people have the opportunity to act without the regard to their real world and identity, they would feel less vulnerable about opening up. Whatever they say or do can't be directly linked to the rest of their lives, and they don't have to take responsibility for their hostile comments or actions, for they could convince themselves consciously that those behaviors are not from the “real me”.

Secondly, cyber disinhibition largely comes from the asynchronization in online communication. People do not interact with others right after they post their opinions. It would probably take minutes, hours, even days for one to receive the reply of his comments, including that in aggressive tone. Such delay of feedbacks sometimes contribute to an emotionally more direct expression of our true feelings, for you don’t have to confront any “counterattack” immediately towards your offenses. Post on your complains and just run away. The safe feelings of doing so would provide you a great stimulus to be more “frankly”, though sometimes detrimental to your relationships in real-life.

For the last point, the medium determines the characteristics of communication in social network. In social network website, most of human interactions was achieved in the form of message. Although most of our messages would receive their responses, the way of communication in social network would still be considered as “one-way” delivering rather than “dialoge”. When you gather your though and organize your expression, you would not receive the enough explanation or interaction from others in either facial or linguistic form. Under such condition, a conflict could sometimes be escalated with misunderstanding.

Admittedly, cyber disinhibition motivates people to expression more openly. However, sometimes, such action of showing your rudeness, harsh criticisms, anger, hatred, even threats would act as a double-edge sword. Next time before sending off a offended message, think twice and never do something leading to a later regret.

The “Dominating Force” of Social Content Creation

As we mentioned in the first week, social network has just emerged in recent decade and was just about to show off its dominating force to the traditional Internet applications. Specifically, the birth of “the Social Content Creation”, a new on-line service based on user participation and user-generated content, has gradually eaten up the market share of paper-bound alternatives and, even, the conventional online encyclopedia.

The "death" of MSN Encarta three years ago could be the best evidence to reveal the true power of Social Content Creation. Dating back to the year of 2009, there could not be much astonishing headlines as the Microsoft's announcement to shut down its online encyclopedia service, MSN Encarta. In my perspective, it could, undoubtedly, be regarded as a devastating blow to the traditional online content service.

Started by Microsoft in the mid-1990s, MSN Encarta has been the best online encyclopedia service for nearly ten years. During its establishment, Microsoft employed the best professionals to write and edit thousands of articles, the most experienced managers to overcharge the whole process and the adept engineers to provide technical support. However, ten years later, Wikipedia, an entirely differrent mode of online cyclopedia, hit its ancestor in the head with a brick. Nobody gets paid and nobody needs to pay. Do it for fun. Everyone could write and edit the items that he's particularly interested in.

Why did Encarta surrender? As the company has said on its webpage:

"Encarta has been a popular product around the world for many years. However, the category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed. People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past.”

It suggests that Encarta has failed to meet the public’s demand of bursting information in society. But how did Wiki succeed?

In my opinion, the success of such a social media website would be particularly focused on three aspects, low threshold, quick react and motivation oriented.

Firstly, Wiki is totally free of charge and technically user-friendly. Consequently, it enables everyone to share its knowledge from anywhere of the world and enormously enlarges both the range and scale of the information.

Secondly, Wiki could update itself in a timely manner. In 2005, Encarta tried to take the middle ground by allowing users to submit suggestion for article updates, but these were not integrated into articles until they had been approved by Encarta editors. However, on Wiki, everyone could take the priority to post and correct the knowledge in time without the acceptance of authority. Such method guarantees a quick react to the social events.

Finally, Wiki “pays” people by personal satisfaction rather than by money. The innovative idea of allowing editors to leave signatures on their works would inspire its editors’ intrinsic motivation to share their knowledge in some degree.

Taking all the factors above mentioned, we could easily figure out the power of the Social Media. But there is always a "however". Every technologies would have its benefits and its drawbacks. The shortcomings of Social Media, especially of Social Content Creation, have also emerged in todays' world.  

Do you have any idea about its weakness, my friends? Leave the question for you^_^ 

( For Your Participation ! )

REFERENCE:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encarta

http://baike.baidu.com/view/1637.htm

http://baike.baidu.com/view/281298.htm

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