social reading

First meeting - ideas for readings

We had our first meeting today, and discussed a number of potential topics and readings.

Social simulation
Social simulation and the modelling of social interactions will be a big theme. We're going to start with a discussion of some of the fundamental questions: how to relate these simulations to empirical data? how to evaluate a verify the results of a simulation - what do we really learn from them?
The readings for next week will be:

• Robert Axelrod's 1997 essay "Advancing the Art of Simulation in the Social Sciences" proposes that simulation is a "third way of doing science, in contrast to both induction and deduction".
  
• W.A.V. Clark's 1991 paper "Residential preferences and neighborhood racial segregation: a test of the Schelling segregation model." looks at a classic social model in light of real world data. (or via JStore here)
  
• In addition, Jonathan Rauch's Atlantic Monthly (April 2002) piece "Seeing Around Corners", provides a good, general discussion of the issues.
  
• The simulation of Anasazi village formation carried out at Sante Fe is an intersting example of using simulations to understand the forces behind observed data.
  

Here are some of the other topics we are planning to read and discuss in the next few weeks - and please add other suggestion, either for topics or readings. (Readings listed here are very preliminary).

Reputation
Explicit and implicit reputation indicators; group and individual reputations. Today's explicit reputation mechanism (e.g. ebay's) are plagued with reliability problems stemming from fear of retaliation, etc. What other models would work in these environments? Is there a radically different approach? Can it be experimented with through simulation? Reputation and trust.
Toshio Yamagishi. Trust as a form of social intelligence.

Social networks
Mapping online social networks with data such as email records, AIM buddy lists, etc. is attractively easy. But how meaningful are these maps? What contextual information - about the individual nodes (e.g. role in the organization, personality, motivation, etc. ) or the links (e.g. temporal data, frequency and direction, etc.) - would make for more meaning depictions of the social structure?

Deception and fakes

Fashion, self-representation and the flow of information
Strang and Macy, 2001. "In Search of Excellence: Fads, Success Stories,
and Adaptive Emulation"
Are there fashions to be found in blogs? How to find, model them? What is a good model for fashion in a complexly multi-hierarchical world

Cognitive categories
Linton C. Freeman. Filling in the Blanks: A Theory of Cognitive Categories and the Structure of Social Affiliation.Social Psychology Quarterly, Vol. 55, No. 2, p. 118-127.

Structuralism and sociolinguistics
Saussure, Lacan

People in organizations
Cross, R. & Prusak, L (2002). The People That Make Organizations Stop --- Or Go. Harvard Business Review 80(6), pp. 104-112.
Levin, D., Cross, R., & Abrams, L. (2002). The Strength of Weak Ties You Can Trust: The Mediating Role of Trust in Effective Knowledge Transfer. AOM Proceedings (Denver Conference). Awarded Lawrence Erlbaum Best Paper Award for 2002 Academy of Management Meetings.

attended by Scott Golder, Ethan Perry, Andrew Fiore, Martin Wattenberg and Judith Donath

Posted by Judith Donath at June 17, 2003 03:54 PM