online communities: visualization and formalization
DESCRIPTION
Online communities have increased in size and importance dramatically over the last decade. The fact that many communities are online means that it is possible to extract information about these communities and the connections between their members much more easily using software tools, despite their potentially very large size. The links between members of the community can be presented visually and often this can make patterns in the structure of sub-communities immediately obvious. The links and structures of layered communities can also be formalized to gain a better understanding of their modelling. This paper explores these links with some specific examples, including visualization of these relationships and a formalized model of communities using the Z notation. It also considers the development of such communities within the Community of Practice social science framework. Such approaches may be applicable for communities associated with cybersecurity and could be combined for a better understanding of their development.TRANSCRIPT
Online Communities:Visualization and Formalization
Prof. Jonathan P. BowenMuseophile Limited, Oxford, UK
www.jpbowen.com
Abingdon School
3rd win in a row at Henley Royal Regatta on 7th July 2013, breaking previous record time.
Overview
• Online communities
• Visualization tools
• Formalization in Z
• Community of Practice
• Application to cybersecurity?
Communities• Community of Practice
(CoP) – collection of peopledeveloping domain knowledge
• Different communities– cybersecurity, Z notation, visualization, ...
• Body of Knowledge (BoK)– ontology for a particular domain
• Interdisciplinarity vs. Multidisciplinarity
Types of community• CoP on Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Community_of_practice• Online CoP (OCoP): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Online_community_of_practice
Other types of community• Virtual community: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Category:Virtual_communities• Community of interest: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Community_of_interest
Example – two communities (arts and science)
Facebook TouchGraph connections
Visualization
Top 30 co-authors as measured by the number of publications
Academic Search
co-author graph
Academic Search citation graph• Top 34 authors by number of citations
Supervisors and studentsAlonzo Church and Alan Turing
Academic Search
genealogy graph
See alsoMathematics Genealogywebsite
The Erdős number• Paul Erdős (1913–1996)
– Hungarian mathematician– en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erdős– Erdős number 0– Co-authored over 1,000 publications
• 511 co-authors– Erdős number 1– Co-authors of Erdős co-authors
• Erdős number 2• Etc.
Academic Search
co-author path
Robin Wilson, mathematician and co-author/editor(Erdős number 1)
Links to chair
Jonathan Bowen and David Llewellyn-Jones via Carlos Delgado Kloos andMadjid Merabti
Links by co-authorship
Jonathan Bowen and ...
Formalization in Z• Sets of names of people and communities
State 1• Links between people• Memberships of communities
State 2• People without links to others• Entities with no community membership• People with no links to them from others
State 3• Stronger constraints
State 4• People are not linked to themselves• Communities cannot be (transitively)
members of themselves
• ...+ is irreflexive transitive closure
State 5• Top-level communities
• People are linked in some way
Status operation• People (output linked!) directly linked from
a particular person (input p?)
• (|...|) is relational image
Status operation
• People (common!) directly linked from two other specific people (p1? and p2?)
Status operation
• Communities (transitively) associated with a particular person (p?)
Community of Practice (CoP)Social sciences concept• Wenger, E.: Communities of Practice:
Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1998)
• Wenger, E., McDermott, R.A., Snyder, W.: Cultivating Communities of Practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Harvard Business School Press, Boston (2002)
• A brief introduction by Etienne Wenger, 2006: www.ewenger.com/theory
Fundamental elements of a CoP1. Domain: Common interest to be
effective. E.g., cybersecurity.2. Community: Group of people willing
to engage with others. E.g., security experts, technology experts, sociologists, etc.
3. Practice: Explore existing and develop new knowledge. Use of security and networked IT expertise.
Stages of community development
1. Potential
2. Coalescing
3. Maturing
4. Stewardship
5. Transformation
Cultivating a CoP1. Design a CoP to evolve naturally. 2. Create opportunities for open discussion.3. Welcome and allow different levels of
participation.
The Dark Side ...
The project that dares not speak its name ...
Conclusion
Prof. Jonathan [email protected]
www.jpbowen.com
• Online communities• Visualization tools• Formalization (e.g., in Z)• Community of Practice (CoP)• Application to cybersecurity?
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