From visibility to observability: Internet and the accelerated process of self-observation in social systems

Fabio GigliettoUniversity of Urbino “Carlo Bo”

XVII ISA World Congress of Sociology, Gothenburg, Sweden

Background:Theory of Social Systems

• Social systems are (recursive, operationally closed, self-observing) networks of communication;

• Communication requires an high degree of coordination among participants (operationally closed psychic systems);

• Continuation of communication is therefore improbable;• Language, media of dissemination and generalized

symbolic media contribute to increase the probability of the continuation of this process;

• Semantics as the repository of themes and connection used by a social system.

persistence/searchability/scalability/ replicability/(boyd 2007)

Background:Four properties of User Generated Content

persistence scalability replicability searchability

few Writings Printing press, newspapers

Digital media (pc, video-cameras)

World Wide Web + Google (Google Book Search)

many Writings Personal online publishing / Web 2.0 (Blogs, Flickr, YouTube)

Digital media (pc, video-cameras)

World Wide Web + Google (Google Blog Search)

previous experiences:Working with online user generated content for Sociological Research

Social systems between individual and society* (2005)

Eyes on Europe (2006)

Pregnancy 2.0 (2007)

Source Google News Flickr YouTube

Type of data Public RSS Feed Yahoo! API Website search

Database - - -

Amount of data 12.000 articles from 240 sources

4.100 photos 150 videos

* Published in Giglietto, F., & Caramaschi, G. (2009). Social System Theory Between Individuals and Society. In J. M. Aguado, B. Scott, & E. Buchinger, Technology and Social Complexity. Murcia: University of Murcia Press.

from WOW20 to SIGSNA:Working with online user generated content for Sociological Research

WOW20 (2007) SIGSNA (2009)

Social Media Blogs FriendFeed

Type of data Public RSS feed Public RSS feed

Database Relational DB Relational DB

Amount of data 3000 blog entries 10.454.195 FF post*

* Entries and comments

Full papers from all the research projects presented here are available on SIGSNA website: http://larica.uniurb.it/sigsna

The social web is not going awayThe web is undergoing a fundamental change

This part of the presentation is based uponThe Real Life Social Network v2 (http://bit.ly/dgROG5) by Paul Adams

Debbie commented on Brianʼs photo.

OFFLINEONLINE

Public Internet (Twitter, Facebook Pages)

Location based SNSs

From visibility to observabilityIndividual, platform owners and social scientists

• Three levels of analysis– Individual Ego centered social network;– Network of conversations (social systems/systems

of interactions?);– Platform systemic perspective.

But the web is changing… again (1/2)Challenges & opportunities for Sociological Research based on online user generated content

But the web is changing… again (2/2)Challenges & opportunities for Sociological Research based on online user generated content

• Analyzing UGC in the Internet Public Sphere (real time comments on public events?);

• For everything else you will need to ask the permission to the author:• Creating ad-hoc websites to host focus groups

or surveys and interviews;• Make use of location data.