Group Processes Online: Opportunities for research collaboration
This panel discussion is motivated by the growing interest, and the growing opportunities for researchers of group processes to leverage data from computer mediated interaction, and to foster greater collaboration between academic researchers and researchers in the social media industry. The panel is motivated by the legacy of Peter Kollock, who was one of the first researchers in group processes to recognize the potential for productive research at the intersection of group processes and online interaction.
Panelists:
Judd Antin, Facebook
Robb Willer, Stanford University
John Kelly, Morningside Analytics
Organizer:
Howard T. Welser, Ohio University
Several recent publications can help us explore the range of possible issues for this discussion:
- "Computational Social Science" in Science by Lazer, Pentland, Adamic, Aral, Barabasi, Brewer, Christakis, Contractor, Fowler, Gutmann, Jebara, Kink, Macy, Roy and Van Alstyne.
- In ten years time, which research areas in group processes should be included in a retrospective discussion of progress in computational social science?
- "The Role of Social Networks in Information Diffusion" demonstrates a large scale experimental study of tie strength and diffusion in Facebook by Bakshy, Rosenn, Marlow and Adamic.
- Imagine a similar scale experimental project investigating commitment and identity, or status and power.
- The recent book "Social Commitments in a Depersonalized World" by Lawler, Thye and Yoon and
- Consider the many hypotheses from this work that could be investigated using data from online discussion forums, Facebook, or other social media.
- How can greater cooperation between researchers and across industry and academic fields be fostered? How can we maintain and expand the spirit of open scientific inquiry when data are increasingly held by private industries? Bernando Huberman raises these and many other important questions, in a correspondence to Nature, and again in the NYT.
- What new models of collaboration are needed to foster open research using data from social media?
