Stigmergy and Collaboration: Tracing the Contingencies of Mediated Interaction

Social network analysis is primarily based in the investigation of ties between nodes and the groups that those ties form. Computer-mediated interaction has introduced many unique forms of tie data to the field. The form of data used in this research are traces of activity left when people create and edit digital artifacts, and when navigating around hyperlinked environments. Using intentional and unintentional traces of activity to generate social graphs provides a unique window into collaboration and interaction. This paper elaborates a technique that uses event log data to trace contingencies in user activity and generate directed two-mode graphs, associograms, which can then be abstracted to sociogram representations. The social network ties generated represent connections between people based on actions contingent on one another. These ties can be used to represent potential social connections for collaboration, social collectives for coordination, and stigmergic self-organization.

[1]  Mark S. Schlager,et al.  Teacher Professional Development, Technology, and Communities of Practice: Are We Putting the Cart Before the Horse? , 2003 .

[2]  Johan H. Koskinen,et al.  Modelling the evolution of a bipartite network - Peer referral in interlocking directorates , 2012, Soc. Networks.

[3]  E. A. Bennet.  INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY , 1954 .

[4]  Victor Kaptelinin,et al.  Acting with technology: Activity theory and interaction design , 2006, First Monday.

[5]  Ervin Laszlo,et al.  The systems view of the world , 1972 .

[6]  Sandra Hughes-Hassell,et al.  School Reform and the School Library Media Specialist , 2007 .

[7]  Daniel D. Suthers,et al.  Bridging Socio-Technical Capital in an Online Learning Environment , 2009, 2009 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[8]  G. Hodgson.  The Concept of Emergence in Social Sciences: Its History and Importance , 2000 .

[9]  Daniel D. Suthers.  Interaction, Mediation, and Ties: An Analytic Hierarchy for Socio-Technical Systems , 2011, 2011 44th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[10]  Jon M. Kleinberg,et al.  The small-world phenomenon: an algorithmic perspective , 2000, STOC '00.

[11]  Everett M. Rogers,et al.  Communication Networks: Toward a New Paradigm for Research , 1980 .

[12]  E. JeffreyGoldstein,et al.  Emergence as a Construct : History and Issues , 2000 .

[13]  Stanley Wasserman,et al.  Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications , 1994, Structural analysis in the social sciences.

[14]  Devan Rosen,et al.  Social networks and online environments: when science and practice co-evolve , 2010, Social Network Analysis and Mining.

[15]  Margarete Kedzior,et al.  Teacher Professional Development , 2004 .

[16]  Mark S. Schlager,et al.  Building Virtual Communities: Evolution of an Online Education Community of Practice , 2002 .

[17]  J. Kim,et al.  Birds of a Feather Protest Together: Theorizing Self-Organizing Political Protests with Flock Theory , 2010 .

[18]  H. Maturana,et al.  Autopoiesis and Cognition : The Realization of the Living (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Scie , 1980 .

[19]  R. Breiger.  The Duality of Persons and Groups , 1974 .

[20]  H. Maturana,et al.  Autopoiesis and Cognition , 1980 .

[21]  Penelope M. Sanderson,et al.  Exploratory Sequential Data Analysis: Foundations , 1994, Hum. Comput. Interact..

[22]  H. Blumer,et al.  Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method , 1988 .

[23]  Christophe G. Giraud-Carrier,et al.  Implicit affinity networks and social capital , 2009, Inf. Technol. Manag..

[24]  P.-P. Grasse.  La reconstruction du nid et les coordinations interindividuelles chezBellicositermes natalensis etCubitermes sp. la théorie de la stigmergie: Essai d'interprétation du comportement des termites constructeurs , 1959, Insectes Sociaux.

[25]  Devan Rosen,et al.  Cooperation and Coordination in Decentralized Communication Networks , 2008, Proceedings of the 41st Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 2008).

[26]  Daniel D. Suthers,et al.  Professional Development in Communities of Practice. , 2007 .

[27]  Daniel D. Suthers,et al.  A framework for conceptualizing, representing, and analyzing distributed interaction , 2010, Int. J. Comput. Support. Collab. Learn..

[28]  B. Latour.  Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory , 2005 .

[29]  Thomas E. Potok,et al.  A Stigmergy Approach for Open Source Software Developer Community Simulation , 2009, 2009 International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering.

[30]  Daniel D. Suthers,et al.  Technology-Supported Systemic Reform: An Initial Evaluation and Reassessment , 2004, ICLS.

[31]  Mark Elliott.  Stigmergic Collaboration: The Evolution of Group Work: Introduction , 2006 .

[32]  C. T. Butts,et al.  Revisiting the Foundations of Network Analysis , 2009, Science.

[33]  Peter R. Monge,et al.  Theories of Communication Networks , 2003 .

[34]  Daniel D. Suthers,et al.  Using a Contingency Graph to Discover Representational Practices in an Online Collaborative Environment , 2009, Res. Pract. Technol. Enhanc. Learn..