Clusters and Connectors

The following was the most interesting quote from one of the readings for this week:
"As networks are clustered, nodes that are linked only to nodes in their cluster could have a central role in that subculture or genre. Without links connecting them to the outside world, they can be quite far from nodes in other clusters."

It was interesting that while I was reading this Nitin shared news item about a new social networking website. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/technology/30poor.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin
This site named babajob.com is essentially forcing links between two clusters. The website is not really a hub but it is a bridge or if we look at it as an entity then it is a vary powerful connector?

(To be continued)

The biggest problem I have right now is defining the scope.

1. How much do I want to do as part of the class assignment –

- Do a lit review and define my questions, Create data gathering tools?

- Analyze the already existing data in form of the discussion board postings and what ever information is available on the community and personal pages as of now.

- In addition, do a generic survey for the population and focused interviews with some people.

I am not able to figure out how much I would be able to do given the time constraints.

2. Another set of confusion is related to the difficulties of observing members' interaction outside the space of the online community. The members can post scraps on each other's scrapbooks. It is humanly impossible to gather these posts. Especially because members are in different time zones, they can easily delete the scraps on their scrapbooks as well as the ones posted on other people's scrapbooks after they are read. Orkut has now added google chat inside orkut. I have no way of capturing this activity. I cannot access the emails they can send to each other through orkut internal messaging, neither do I have the information of how they are interacting face to face. I know for sure that these activities are happening as they mention it in their posts and scraps.

3. What all in that data am I going to look for.

The articles this week, especially the ethnographic study of Usenet has given me a better idea of what all I can look for but I am still fumbling. In a couple of days I plan to make a list of what all I can explore and may be, go ahead from there.

Also, I am a bit confused about where exploring one community in detail is going to lead me. It is interesting to explore but is it useful? I cannot extrapolate anything because the community is unique because of its subject, members, their physical location, the fact that some of them can and do meet outside the online space, the hierarchy that was formed initially and so on. Do I need to compare it with another community, may be with similar subject, and see how it is different/operated differently and why? As you can see I am pretty confused.

How can I get what I need?

• While writing this post I realized that it helped to write down all the questions. It is better than juggling all these in my head. So next step should be to write down all possible things I can do and then take up one direction and define the scope.
• I need to talk about it with somebody. Preferably with Sarah and also some of the class participants. I need to read other blogs and see who is thinking on similar lines and ask if we could brainstorm together.
• I definitely need to know more about ethnographic methods. The readings this week were step in that direction.
• I think defining the scope would also be easier if I define what I want out of this class. So may be I should do that in writing.

Questions I want to explore

My initial questions were in two directions -
1. What motivates people to share information, knowledge or their creations online in blogs, wikis, virtual worlds. The question arose as I was perplexed
2. W.r.t. a specific community online – What makes them a community? If they are a community how did they become one (process of formation)? How do they interact (group dynamics)?

I am more excited about the second question. Firstly, because it is exciting to observe a process of formation of an informal learning community (informal because nobody designed it to be one as a part of any formal learning exercise). Secondly, I am hoping to get insight on if and how the social networking sites like Orkut can be one of the tools for adults to engage in informal learning, knowledge building. Adults who are outside the framework of the formal education programmes available.

The articles for a couple of weeks (Identity & Place) are helping me formulate questions a bit differently. I am also redefining my way of looking at the community as online only and looking at their experience online and offline as separate entities. I still have to think about the authenticity of identity part of it. Especially since Orkut allows people to change their display names and images without any barriers.