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.
"the SNA has still remained in an early stage", cannot agree more with it! I believe that an important strength of SNA is, unlike most data analysis tools, it is based on the assumption that people are all interdependent. More detail could be found in my blog, welcome to read and comment :)
回复删除I think it is interesting that Social Network Analysis is the study of social relations among a set of actors. And your approach to get the warning earlier is based on these relations? As you have proposed the example of prediction of H1N1 influenza virus' outbreak, maybe these two scientists came up with the prediction through analyzing the variation leaded by other factors and interaction among these factors.
回复删除Thank you for your interesting point!
Thanks to your article to open a new perspective to SNA, which, I believe, cannot be found without deep research. Indeed, the effect of SNA is not remaining the theory level, but could be applied into practice to solve the real issues. The "Early Warning Social Listening" would be a best example to explain the function of SNA methods we have learnt last three week. Just as you said, it is the time for understanding. We would connect more theory models to the practice to analyze and explain the problems in social life.
回复删除It's so unbelievable to hear that “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” and it makes the impression of SNA in my mind suddenly great ...
回复删除I can think of maybe an SNA's utilization in real life situation ... It's our course evaluation system ... Using SNA to find out everyone's position in our class blogger network and know how involved we are in this course ...
Your article impressed me a lot.Nowadays we are all in the condition of social networking using facebook,renrne,weibo and any others.However, do we really know ourselves? If not, the computer may not understand us either and when we perform in social networking, SNA may not be in use.
回复删除We play our roles in the virtual life on the internet, and also show ourselves in the real life. The network structures and patterns provide us opportunities to understand, calculate or even forecast some certain behaviors in a computational way. What a point! And your example of H1N1 is also shocking me! About your point that the SNA has still remained in an early stage, my view is that people still haven't get their best use of SNA. In the future, I hope the development of SNA can change the way we live.
回复删除Using social network analysis in real life is very interesting topic. I never think of that and you broadened my horizon. You give us a good example to understand the SNA used in real life. We can use the SNA to predicted the outbreak of the H1N1 influenza virus on campus in 2009 after analyzing the unusual behavior patterns among the social network. We can also use the SNA to do many things in real life.
回复删除The H1NI example is really impressive. Crisis prevention is such a great application of Social Network Analysis. As you mentioned, SNA is still in its early stage, what it will be like is still unknown. I believe lots of great use of SNA will be carried out in the future. Hope the SNA will finally improve our life.
回复删除Actually, SNA's utilization in real life situation are diverse. In other students' blogs, I found that they explain the SNA's application with real TV show, Mobile communication, age of big data and so on. As you mentioned in the blog, I also believe SNA will be more widely used in our daily lives.
回复删除Very good example about SNA. I think that the rumors on the OSN may not be true. Sometime, if we believe all the rumor on the OSN, and the propagate the "news" to each other, it may terrify the society. It is very hard to identify whether the rumor is true or not.
回复删除SNA seemed to be something entirely new to me... When I was preparing to enroll in the research project course of IEMS I met a postdoc of Dr.Huang JW, and he described a location based application to me. It was a SNA for preventing flu spreading with the help of location based social networking. I thought it was a great idea and I'm expecting more applications that SNA will bring to us.
回复删除According to what I know before, Social Network Analysis is an invaluable resource for researchers across the social sciences and for students of social theory and research methods. After reading your article, I understand more about SNA. But I still have no other new idea about the SNA's utilization in real life situation. Looking forward to your further research~
回复删除The utilization of SNA in real life is not noticed in my early study. I can connect the concept with the application after reading your blog.
回复删除An application of SNA to preventive epidemiology. I think that kind of observation reveals an interesting aspect our daily lives besides scientific laws.
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