Research Sociologist
Microsoft Research
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
Email: masmith@microsoft.com
I focus on methods that illuminate the structure and dymaics of social cyberspaces. I am interested in both the measurement of various dimensions of activity and structure in online groups as well as the use of these metrics to enhance the user interfaces used to access them. My approach is driven by three sociological traditions: interactionism, collective action dilemma theory, and social network analysis. These approaches complement one another, providing a theoretical and methodological framework for the evaluation, visualization, and interaction with social cyberspaces. My goal is to identify generic features and patterns of social processes in these spaces and to assess their range variation. Initial results can be found at netscan.research.microsoft.com.
The Netscan project applies these methods to the Usenet. I have collected and am analyzing over twenty months of data containing the details from over two-hundred-million messages written by more than two million individuals participating in more than thirty-five thousand newsgroups maintained within the Usenet. My primary goal is to construct a range of basic measurements of the Usenet as a whole, to capture the range of variation between newsgroups and individual participants, and to visualize the patterns of interaction that connect newgroups to newsgroups and people-to-people. By answering a range of base-line questions about these groups, from size, population turn-over, interconnection with other groups, and style of interaction, I hope to inform the design and improvement of network interaction media.
Three sociological traditions interactionism, collective action dilemma theory, and social network analysis can be brought to bear in concert to frame the idea of online groups and to suggest methods and measurements of their activity and structure.
Collective action dilemma theory addresses the ways that changes in the economies of communication and coordination lead to new forms of cooperation. Key themes in this tradition are the production of public goods and common property. One of the most basic questions in the social sciences is the problem of cooperation, the social dilemma that individually rational behavior can often lead to collectively irrational outcomes. In the face of temptations to behave selfishly, how can a group of people ever manage to establish or maintain cooperative relations? This maps well to the activity in many social cyberspaces, like Usenet newsgroups. These groups face a continual "Free Rider" problem and "Tragedies of the Commons" when participants either fail to contribute to the production of the common good or overconsume the common resource (which often takes the form of human attention). The problems of cooperation and collective action are in sharpest relief in systems, like the Usenet, that lack sources of central power and control.
Social network theory offers both a theory and a method for capturing and analyzing the multiplex relationships between people and between groups that make up the structure of social cyberspaces. Network theory defines a group as an empirically discoverable structure; groups emerge as highly interconnected sets of actors. By focusing on relationships, network theory can create images of the complex linkages within and between social cyberspaces.
Interactionist sociology leads to a focus on changes in the nature of communication and self-presentation and their implications for new forms of interaction and identity. A central concept in interactionist approaches is the distinction between what we give and give-off. In social cyberspaces the balance shifts towards the "give" side, granting participants greater control over their presentations. However, remnants of "give-off" remain. Enhancing what people "give-off" can fill in the blanks that have obscured social identity, history and reputation.
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