eKarine.org - Information and Society » Power

Network Theory

Karine Nahon — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 21:29:47 +0000

On February 2010 a bunch of network scholars (including me) convened in a workshop in USC (the Annenberg School) to talk about Network Theory. The strength of the workshop was in its ability to bring interdisciplinary perspectives about network theory to one table. The videos, powerpoints and reports of each one of the talks are available on the ANN (Annenberg Networks Network) website.

As a result, the IJoC (International Journal of Communication) dedicated a volume to network theory.

Here are the papers presented in that volume (they are fully accessible in the following links):

Prologue to the Special Section: Network Multidimensionality in the Digital Age by Manuel Castells, Peter Monge, Noshir Contractor

Introduction to the Workshop: The Promise of Network Theory by Manuel Castells

A Network Theory of Power by Manuel Castells

Fuzziness of Inclusion/Exclusion in Networks by Karine Nahon

Networks of Power, Degrees of Freedom by Yochai Benkler

Multidimensional Networks and the Dynamics of Sociomateriality: Bringing Technology Inside the Network by Noshir Contractor, Peter Monge, Paul M. Leonardi

The Flip Side of Metcalfe’s Law: Multiple and Growing Costs of Network Exclusion by Rahul Tongia, Ernest J. Wilson III

The Ever Evolving Web: The Power of Networks by Wendy Hall

Networks, Societies, Spheres: Reflections of an Actor-network Theorist by Bruno Latour

Blogosphere and Journalists

Karine Nahon — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 19:14:11 +0000

This post covers the paper that Kevin Wallsten is presenting at HICSS at the e-government minitrack.

Kevin is trying to assess the relationship between the blogosphere and journalists.
He looked at the A-list blogs by combining two main authority indices of blogs - Karpf's BAI index and The Truth Laid Bear.

His findings: Since 2004 until 2008 there is a steady increase of the coverage of popular political blogs in print media. He also reports on a similar phenomenon that we encountered in the retroV project - a power-law distribution (a skewed distribution) of citations of blogs. In other words, most of the articles in printed newspapers cite a small number of blogs - mainly Huffington post and DailyKos - Wallsten claims for a 80-20 distribution.
His results show that most journalist quote/or cite information from blogs and that one of the main topics in which journalist turn to bloggers to seek information is in election time on topics related to the election. Finally, he showed that liberal blogs are far likely to be cited than conservative blogs. (Frank Bannister raised an important question of whether liberal are cited more because the examined journals were more liberals in their nature).

Blogs asmediasources hicss-presentation2010

Network Gatekeeping Theory – what is it? how can researchers use it?

Karine Nahon — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 09:56:00 +0000

Gatekeeping theories have been a popular heuristic for describing information control for years, but none have attained a full theoretical status in the context of networks. Network Gatekeeping Theory defines basic concepts like gatekeepers, gatekeeping and gatekeeping mechanisms and gated. It helps understanding relationships among gatekeepers and between gatekeepers and gated, the entity subjected to a gatekeeping process. Network Gatekeeping Salience proposes identifying gated and their salience to gatekeepers by four attributes (1) their political power in relation to the gatekeeper; (2) their information production ability; (3) their relationship with the gatekeeper; and (4) their alternatives in the context of gatekeeping.

In a web 2.0 world the relationship of gatekeepers-gated is intriguing. The users ability to produce information and the dynamic relationship between users and gatekeepers makes NGT (Network Gatekeeping Theory) a great framework to analyze these chages.

An elaborated article about Network Gatekeeping Theory can be found here: Barzilai-Nahon Karine, 2008, “Toward a Theory of Network Gatekeeping: A Framework for Exploring Information Control“, Journal of the American Information Science and Technology, Vol. 59(9), pp. 1-20.

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