A survey of Facebook as a research site: From personal networks to the world's social graph and (something) in between

Bernie Hogan [ @blurky ]Research Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute

Summer Social Webshop 2012August 21, 2012

Identifying this data is completely tractable

• Backstrom, L., Dwork, C., and Kleinberg, J. (2007). Wherefore art thou r3579x? : anonymized social networks, hidden patterns, and structural steganography. In Proceedings of the 16th international conference on World Wide Web, pages 181–190. ACM New York, NY, USA.

• Direct attack needs ~ sqrt(log(n)) nodes.

• Narayanan, A. and Shmatikov, V. (2009). De-anonymizing social networks. Forthcoming: IEEE C&S.

• Starting with even less and matching to existing network can get over 90% of the network accurately.

One does not simply walk into Facebook data

Testing Tie Strength and Trace Data (Beyond Position)

Gilbert and Karahalios (2009)

NameGenWeb

Source: http://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp

Potential Measures of Social Capital

A. Size B. Clustering

C. Average Degree

A. Size

B. Clustering

C. Average Degree

But network structure isn’t really social capital, is it?

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Me

Williams Bridging Scale (Adapted by Ellison et al., 2011)

Williams Bonding Scale (Adapted by Ellison et al., 2011)

•There are several people in my Facebook network I trust to help solve my problems.•There is someone in my Facebook network I can turn to for advice about making very important decisions.•There is no one in my Facebook network that I feel comfortable talking to about intimate personal problems. (reversed)•When I feel lonely, there are several people in my Facebook network I can talk to.•If I needed an emergency loan of $500, I know someone in my Facebook network I can turn to.•The people I interact with in my Facebook network would put their reputation on the line for me.•The people I interact with in my Facebook network would be good job references for me.•The people I interact with in my Facebook network would share their last dollar with me.•I do not know people in my Facebook network well enough to get them to do anything important. (reversed)

Signals of Relational Investment. (α = .90)

Information-seeking Behavior(α = .87)

Using Network Measures as Independent Variables

1. Community Detection.- Using the “Louvain method” to count the number of modularity maximized cohesive subgroups

2. Transitivity.- Using classic triangles over 3*2-paths method to assess global transitive ties

3. Giant Component. - Average network size: 217- Median 89 percent of network members in the largest component, Median 98 percent in LC + isolates and dyads.

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5FB

_BondingSC

_Scale

.2 .4 .6 .8 1Clust_Coeff

NetworkBridge

Low transitivity

High transitivity

Summarizing the Good News from Structure• People feel differently about Facebook in relation

to the connectivity of their network structure.

• Not only is active Facebook use associated with social capital, but so is having a cohesive network with global closure, independent of behavior.

• Bridging capital appears to be related to subgroups within the giant component, but more strongly to active engagement with the network.

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/briansolis/2696198607/

Having two identities for yourself is an example of a

lack of integrity

Hometown

Family

Sports

Co-workers

Neighbors

Modern Life Facebook

Friends

Friends of Friends

Everyone

Friends of Friends

Everyone

Not a homogenous group

“Bolivar”

Anonymous Friends

Hobby group

Oxford Friends

Ex-students

Foreign friends

“I remember once one of my friends from University posted a link on my wall. They know I'm into sexual politics and gender and stuff like that – he knew I was doing a module on it. So yeah, this link was to a woman’s blog who was some kind of online sex worker who specialised in weird and creepy fetish porn [laughter]. I mean, it was all reasonably tasteful because it was her blog not a porn site, but, you know, there was nudity there and some pretty hardcore feminist statements about sex and whatever.

So yeah, I sort of fell out with them a bit over it because….though they probably weren’t thinking about it, I’ve got very religious family back home in Gaza who look at my profile all the time. If, you know, one of my young cousins had clicked on that [laughter] they would have just thought it was porn because they don’t understand. They wouldn’t get it. I’d have been in a lot of trouble. So, yeah, I was pretty mad. I had to delete it.” (A19)

The stageplay

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/teagrrl/17574687/

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marialgilbert/3318487066

The Lowest Common Denominator in Action

Google and Facebook would have you believe that you’re a mirror, but we’re

actually more like diamonds...Look from a different angle, and you see

something completely different.

Special Thanks

• Toronto: Barry Wellman, Juan Antonio Carrasco (and SSHRC)

• MSU: Brandon Brooks, Nicole Ellison, Cliff Lampe and Jessica Vitek (and the NSF)

• Oxford: Joshua Melville (and John Fell Fund)

• Microsoft: danah boyd, Jeff Potter

• Social Media Research Foundation: Marc A. Smith, Arber Ceni

Thank YouBernie Hogan

Research Fellow, OIIhttp://people.oii.ox.ac.uk/hogan

Twitter: @blurkybernie.hogan@oii.ox.ac.uk

Hogan, Bernie. 2012, forthcoming. “Pseudonyms and the Rise of the Real Name Web”. Hartley, J., Burges, J., Bruns, A., Blackwell Companion to New Media Dynamics. Hogan, Bernie. 2010. “The Presentation of Self in the Age of Social Media: Distinguishing Performances and Exhibitions Online.” Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 30(6): 377-386. Hogan, Bernie. 2010. “Visualizing and Interpreting Facebook Networks.” In Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL, eds. D Hansen, Marc A Smith, and Ben Shneiderman. Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufmann, p. 165-180.Brooks, Brandon, Howard T. Welser, Bernie Hogan & Scott titsworth. 2011. “Socioeconomic Status Updates: Family SES and emergent social capital in college student Facebook networks.” Information, Communication & Society (OnlineFirst): 1-21.