Social Network Fragments- Theory

[index][background][theory][implementation][presentations][contact]
[danah boyd][jeff potter]

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Social Network Fragments was developed as a self-awareness tool for individuals to explore the social networks that they create without structural consideration. Our goal was to help users examine their structure so as to unveil the structural holes that are built in such complex networks. These structural holes exist when users choose to fragment portions of their network, often revealing facets of their own identity. As an individual interacts with a diverse range of people, they are motivated to reveal different aspects of their identity, thereby creating a multi-faceted social identity, whereby different people know different things about the individual. This faceting of one's identity allows them to interact in a socially appropriate way in a wide variety of potential environments. In engaging in this behavior, individuals start to segment their social network into a variety of different clusters, or types of people. Often, these people are only aware of a fraction of the individual's entire social network, those with similar identity information. For example, family members often only know other family members; work colleagues only know other work colleagues, etc.

By providing a visual structure of one's social network, we allow the subject to get a glimpse at how they perform this behavior in their email interactions. In email, individuals after take on different personas, represented through different email addresses. Thus, work email addresses are used to engage with work colleagues. By collapsing all of the possible email addresses and tracing the network structure, we provide the subject with one portrait of their digital identity. In doing so, we offer users a tool to understand their social interactions, reflect on the connections that can be observed in their own data and offer a tool for users to reflect on their network. As such, Social Network Fragments is no different than a photo album: it gives the user an image by which to tell stories about previous events and interactions.

Extensive theoretical considerations about social networks, identity construction and self-awareness provoked the implementation of Social Network Fragments. In her thesis, danah documents these ideas for the reader to contemplate.