Social Network Analysis (Lecture 7,8 and 9)

Mathematics again... I already forgot how to calculate matrices. Time to have some revisions on mathematics.

After Lecture 7 and Lecture 8, I have learnt the definition of Social Network Analysis and the terminology. Also, the formulas for calculating different types of centrality.

Before lecture 9, I do not have any idea in what application can make use of social network analysis. It is not much information about SNA application on the internet. I only know that the Sociogram can illustrate the relationship between every people in a social network and we can use a matrix to represent the Sociogram and calculate the centrality of the social network.

After Lecture 9, I have learnt the calculation about Prestige. Also, I have learnt some applications about SNA, which are PageRank and HITS.

I have installed the PageRank plugin for my Chrome web browser, It shows the PageRank status of a website.

http://pagerank.chromefans.org/pagerank-checker/

The below description is quote from above website:

"PageRank (PR) is a link analysis algorithm used by the Google search engine. It's a numeric value (0-10) that represents how important a page is on the web."


I have checked Facebook, CUHK, Google and Yahoo HK's PageRank:


Facebook and Google's PageRank are 9

While CUHK's PageRank is 7

Yahoo HK's PageRank is 3. It is funny to see Yahoo HK's PageRank is lower than most of the websites which I often visit. (Because of Yahoo = Google's competitor ??? I don't think so. To me, I can get the best search result from Google rather than Yahoo. I rarely visit Yahoo in these years. So I think it is possible for Yahoo to have such low PageRank)

When I visit Wikipedia about PageRank, I found that there is an hyperlink about another interesting algorithm, which the algorithm is EigenTrust:

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

The below text is quote from the above website:

"EigenTrust algorithm is a reputation management algorithm for peer-to-peer networks, developed by Sep Kamvar, Mario Schlosser, and Hector Garcia-Molina. The algorithm provides each peer in the network a unique global trust value based on the peer's history of uploads and thus aims to reduce the number of inauthentic files in a P2P network."

The idea is similar to the algorithms which I've learnt in the lectures.

Communication and Social Behaviors on Internet (Lecture 5 and Lecture 6)

The epistemic arms in Class Activity One is

• Understanding
• To acquire true

The epistemic arms in Class Activity Two is

• To avoid false beliefs
• Justify beliefs by referring other group member's beliefs
• To acquire true

I am changed my epistemic aim. In the Class Activity One, I can only do it by myself, so I need to read the whole article, digest it and then find out the answer. In the Class Activity Two, I can see other group member's idea. such that, I have more confidence about my answer's correctness by seeing same answer written by other group members. Also, I can get more information by seeing different group member's idea.

In terms of individual epistemic cognition, knowledge can only be acquired by learning individually, while in terms of group epistemic cognition, knowledge can be built together in a social environment.

When I approach to the problem individually, I need to find out the answer by myself, that's only cognitive processes. While I approach to the problem in group, I can discuss with other people and share my idea to other people, in which the actions involved other three process of Knowledge formation. (Process of formal inquiry, interpersonal processes and community and institutional process)


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In lecture 5, I have learnt the definition and characteristic of psychology group and different types of communication networks. Also, I have learnt about social experience models which let me know the different types of workgroup's characteristic and the roles of participants. Besides, the cloud computing section let me know the aspects of Web2.0 and how people make use of cloud to facilitate collaboration.

In lecture 6, I have used a cloud collaboration tools - "google doc" to finish the class activities. Besides, I have learnt the definition of Epistemology and the theories about knowledge. So far in the course, the philosophy part in the lecture 6 is the most difficult to understand for me.


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The first cloud collaboration tool I have used is Dropbox, which I used to share my documents to the classmate on the internet.  It was very useful to me to share my work to other group members while doing a group project. Sometimes, the document is very large in file size, I cannot send it by e-mail. If I do not use cloud space. I will need to make a ftp or copy the document files to the USB flash and then give it other group members. It save my time for sharing data. It is very convenience that you can just simply put the file into your local hard disk's dropbox folder, then it will automatically upload to the internet and automatically download into group member's hard disk.

http://www.dropbox.com

Psychology and Cognition (Lecture 3 and 4)

I am quite interested in psychology. It is quite different from other science subject which psychology is more abstract to me.

There are a lot of articles about Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory on the internet. Some of them are in Chinese. I have read the below website for my reference.

Link:  http://lefthand1001.pixnet.net/blog/post/12144245-社會認知理論

In lecture 3, I have learnt some basic knowledge and definitions about social psychology. I have also learnt how information is processed by human being, in which the section about memory let me know the characteristics of different type of memory from psychology point of view.
Moreover, the three cognition levels mentioned in lecture 3 let me know how human being interact with each other to build up collective knowledge.

In lecture 4, I have learnt what is Social Inference, Social Cognition and the Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory. Also, I have learnt how the information diffuse through social network and different types of Collaborative Knowledge Construction.

Those social psychology studies helps me to understand how collaboration working on the social network.

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I would like to talk more about the topic of "Cyber Disinhibition" which mentioned in Lecture 4.


People may noticed that Facebook will never has a "Dislike" button. I have found the below article about it.


Link:
http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2010/10/10/facebook-dislike-button-why-it-will-never-happen/



Below texts are quote from the above website:

"So very noble sounding. Your friend is “in bed with the flu, feeling blue :(“, and at last you can show your sympathy. Or a vague acquaintance you’ve ended up ‘friending’ on Facebook posts a rather distasteful video and you can now come out, all guns blazing and ‘dislike’ it.But here’s why Zucker and Co. will never approve a dislike button: people simply can’t be trusted to use a dislike button sensibly.Social media is all about building networks, being accepted, being ‘liked’, sharing information…positive things. A dislike button goes against all of that and would only promote bad karma and negativity. Anti-social media, in other words."

I agree with it. If there is a dislike button, people can easily show their hostile standpoint or insulting the blog holder without using any words. You can imagine that if a girl post a photo of her new hair style, and then there are 100 dislike...it will really hurt the girl. So, in order to keep connecting people in a positive fashion, Facebook should not add a "Dislike" button.

Lecture 1 and 2

Hello, everyone. This is my first time to use "Blog". Before taking this course, I thought social networking is only something like Facebook and Twitter. Some of the social media applications and concepts mentioned in the lectures are totally new and quite interesting to me.

In Lecture one, I have learnt the definition of social networking and social media, the figures about social networking let me know different characteristics of social networking applications and the trend of the communication method, it indicates a significant growth potential of social network. Also, social networking introduced a lot of business opportunities.

In Lecture two, I have learnt a new term "Social  Task" and it's definition and applications. Also, I have  learnt more about blogs and how to write a good blog. To me, I think the most useful content of this lecture is about how to make use of social media in marketing and its examples.

One of the social media marketing examples is recommendation and review system. It is in everywhere of our life. A well-known recommendation and review system which many iPhone users use it almost everyday - Apple's App Store. It contains Top-N best items, a customer review system and Collaborative Filtering. I think it is very successful system. Many iOS device users go to App Store everyday. They don't have time to check all the new things, they only check the Top-N best item and read the comment from other users, and then they can make decision to buy the app according to other customer's rating and comment. Also, at the bottom of the App Info page, there are some recommended App for the user which can let him know what other Apps he may interested in. It helps users easier to find an App suits him.

Top N best items:

Customer's Rating and Review:

Customers also bought (Collaborative Filtering: Item-based filtering):

The web version of App Store:
http://itunes.apple.com/hk/genre/music/id34

The web version only shows the list of Apps, the above recommendation and review systems are only in iTune version App Store.