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Dynamic Network Visualization

Moody, McFarland, Bender-deMoll (2005) “Dynamic Network Visualization“ American Journal of Sociology, volume 110 , pages 1206–1241

Abstract:

DNV_AJS_thumbIncreased interest in longitudinal social networks and the recognition that visualization fosters theoretical insight create a need for dynamic network visualizations, or network “movies.” This article confronts theoretical questions surrounding the temporal representations of social networks and technical questions about how best to link network change to changes in the graphical representation. The authors divide network movies into (1) static flip books, where node position remains constant but edges cumulate over time, and (2) dynamic movies, where nodes move as a function of changes in relations. Flip books are particularly useful in contexts where relations are sparse. For more connected networks, movies are often more appropriate. Three empirical examples demonstrate the advantages of different movie styles. A new software program for creating network movies is discussed in the appendix.

Sbandata! 2005

Yet Another Account of Skye Crashing Around with Large Groups of Strange Loud People and Understanding Very Little

from an email I sent in may 2005

The third Sbandata, an insane convergence of street bands, mostly brass bands, from italy and europe.

This year it was in Rome. It was madness. I was only there saturday and sunday, which is probably good, ’cause I don’t know if I would have survived three days. Either I would have lost my hearing or floated off into the stratosphere supported by an angelic chorus of baritone horns.

Imagine if Kustritza was asked to throw a civic event …..

sbandata posterIf I understand right, “sbandata” means something like “to drift” or “to swerve” as in “the drunken musicians swerved into the street, colliding with pedestrians and tangling traffic with continuous high-decibal acoustic music and general joyus mayhem”. Or something like “he falls in love but lost the mind and is wandering in the street.” Very apt description. I don’t really know much about who did the organizing, I think the coordination was done by folks from the Roman band Titubanda (probably the best street band in Italy), with some financial support from the city of Rome. I think the city gave us the food and wine anyway, as well as somehow supporting/permiting the squated/ceeded ex-elementary school where we slept (those of us who did) on the floor. Everything seemd to appear magically out of delightful anarchy.

Continue reading Sbandata! 2005

SoNIA (Social Network Image Animator)

soniaShot.jpg SoNIA is a Java-based package for visualizing dynamic or longitudinal “network” data. By dynamic, we mean that in addition to information about the relations (ties) between various entities (actors, nodes) there is also information about when these relations occur, or at least the relative order in which they occur.

Some examples..

The source code is on the sourceforge site.

DeptHomelandSecurity.com

In January 2003, before the start of the current war in Iraq, a group of people in San Francisco began experimenting with ideas of how to respond to the newly increased level of rhetoric and propaganda surrounding issues of US national security. The goal was to sensitize people to the threats to civil liberties implied by the (then) newly proposed government projects such as the renamed, repackaged and re-budgeted “Total Information Awareness” program, while at the same time doing outreach to provide political organizing materials to people on the street in a humorus and provocative way. Continue reading DeptHomelandSecurity.com

Direct Action to Stop the War (DASW) Site

DASW logoDASW was an SF Bay-area umbrella group for coordinating non-violent direct action against U.S.-lead wars for global domination. Using classic “spokes-council” organizing model, thousands of people were able to coordinate their actions well enough to shut down the SF financial district during the first days of the invasion of Iraq. More than 2000 people were arrested or detained over several days of protest, only a handful were even charged of any crime. The website provided analysis, calls to action, and some information on legal support and non-violent direct action organizing. Although the guts of the website was written by others (DT) I assisted with content management.

Continue reading Direct Action to Stop the War (DASW) Site

Brass Liberation Orchestra

blo logoA loose affiliation of radical street musicians. The BLO has helped support a large number of actions and issues in the SF bay area over the last several years. Including helping to shutdown the SF financial district during the protests at the beginning of the Iraq war. Since I don’t actually play a horn, I started out playing snare and now a very large surdo. But I’m kind of a “band member at large” as I’m often not in the bay area.

The BLO plays a strange mix of music, but lots of influence from various balkan brass bands and creative arrangements of political music from different ages and movements. There is more information, sheet music, etc on the website.

There seems to be increasing numbers of bands like this in the US, which I find very exciting. Were are beginning to join the international sisterhood of radical brass bands. Groups like the now disbanded Infernal Noise Brigade from seattle, the Hungry March Band and Rude Mechanical Orchestra from NYC. There is now a US email list for interested street band folk, and hopefully this fall we will have the first sbandata-style party (sbandapaloza?) in the form of the HONK festival in Boston.

PajekAnimator

PajekAnimator provides a crude way of animating the structural transitions between network layouts at different points in time. The intention is to assist the eye in discovering relationships by providing clear cues about node “movement” using sinusoidal interpolation of the coordinates of nodes at successive points in time. PajekAnimator is a hacked together chunk of Java code meant to be used as a utility /demonstration of concept in conjunction with the network visualization and analysis software, Pajek.

Pajek is Windows-based freeware, written by Vladimir Batagelj and Andrej Mrvar, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia Downloadable from: vlado.fmf.uni-lj.si/pub/networks/pajek/

PajekAnimator was written by skye for John Padgett, University of Chicago.
Bugs and Questions to:
skyebend@santafe.edu


Version 1.0 9/3/01
Download PajekAnimator v1.0 and documentation (ZIP compressed jar)
View documentation (*.txt)
Download Java source code (ZIP file)

Old(er) research interests

This text was written soon after completing my undergrad thesis. Some things have changed, many themes are still the same

Brief Description of Research Interests——

July 2001

I’ve recently started referring to my area of concentration as “Cultural Mechanics” In the broadest sense, I’m interested in the fundamental parameters underlying the phenomena of cultural transmission and real-world socially mediated information exchange. Obviously there are tremendous number of areas which can fit under such a heading. I’m interested in evolutionary theory and questions about gene-culture co-evolution and the impact of the inclusion of cultural parameters into fitness descriptions. I’m intrigued by work being done on mathematical descriptions of cultural transmission processes.

Continue reading Old(er) research interests

Skye’s Bennington Thesis

Note: This is an HTML adaptation of the version of the thesis from 2001. Some of the ideas are a bit out of date. The original is avalible as a PDF (137 pages, 9.8mb).

Information transmission in social groups:
communication, networks, and interaction

________________________

Skye Bender de-Moll
May 2001

A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts.

Questions and comments are welcome.

Abstract:

I argue that for information transmission to occur there must be communicative contact between individuals. The patterns of contact then provide a set of outer limits for the extent of information spread. But an examination of a formalized communication process shows that the degree of information or knowledge transmitted may be related to the degree to which the communicants share similar bases of meanings and interpretive schemata. An individual’s cultural properties can be described as a set of schemata, frames, heuristics, historical meanings, and behaviors. Acts of communication among individuals lead to increasing similarity along these cultural dimensions, which may change the likelihood of future interactions, and the effectiveness of existing communicative relations. These longer time scale modifications of social structure often feed back into the process, causing systems to behave in a complex and possibly counter-intuitive manner. Ideally, the analysis of the formal properties and behaviors of such systems might shed some light on some of the observed trends and biases in human communication and the processes involved in the formation of social groups. Analyses of a study of self-report name recognition and communication networks among the incoming class at Bennington College are presented, and some implications discussed.

Continue reading Skye’s Bennington Thesis

Introduction to Thesis

On April 16, 2000, a diverse group of activists, anarchists, artists, anti-corporate agitators, union members, and students converged on Washington D.C. Their common purpose, as much as there was one, was to disrupt the meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in an attempt to draw attention to their perception of the organizations’ agendas, and to encourage discussion of specific issues which were not being addressed in the political arena. The protesters hoped to build on the success of the Seattle World Trade Organization protest of November 1999, and intended to employ similar tactics . I was among a group of students from Bennington who went down to take part in the rallies. I had some idea of what to expect, but was still blown away by the intensity of the action and the experience. The details of events, political agendas, encounters and their impact upon me are not relevant here. What is important is that, at least in later considerations, the actions and interactions of those three days served to focus my interest on the relationship between communication, the structure of social relations, and human events.

Fig. 1.a Confrontation between a protester and a man who tried to cross through the line at the IMF/World Bank protest. (Washington D.C. April 16, 2000, photo by author)

Continue reading Introduction to Thesis