Using hybrid networks for the analysis of online software development communities

Social network-based systems usually suffer from two major limitations: they tend to rely on a single data source (e.g. email traffic), and the form of network patterns is often privileged over their content. To go beyond these limitations we describe a system we developed to visualize and navigate hybrid networks constructed from multiple data sources - with a direct link between formal representations and the raw content. We illustrate the benefits of our approach by analyzing patterns of collaboration in a large Open Source project, using hybrid networks to uncover important roles that would otherwise have been missed.