In this image, orange discs are Mayor Emanuel’s two Twitter accounts, blue discs are Aldermen’s accounts, and gray discs are neither (I want to say constituents, but I can’t assume all are). The opacity and weight of the lines connecting them depend on how often the two people talk about or to each other on Twitter. The size of the discs is determined by their in-degree, or how often someone talks about them. We see that two Aldermen figure prominently in the social media conversation, and both respond to people pretty frequently (outgoing arrows). What this means yet, I’m not sure, but it may indicate something about the responsiveness of politicians. The next step is to determine whether any of the properties we can identify in the network relate to things in the real world, e.g., voting behavior, responsiveness, public approval.

Jahna Otterbacher, Matt Shaprio, and I just received funding from IIT’s Social Network Workshop to continue our study of politicians and social media use, so stay tuned.

Dear Rep. Culberson,

I am alarmed to hear that the House Commerce, Justice & Science Committee is considering eliminating or severely cutting back the directorate for Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences (SBE) at the National Science Foundation (NSF). I understand that government spending exceeds our current funds, but eliminating funding for basic science research will make the U.S. even less competitive, making our future economic situation even worse.

A quick check of SBE’s recent funding shows a number of large grants awarded to universities in your district, so I’m sure you can appreciate how important SBE funding really is. For instance, at Rice University, SBE is currently funding roughly $1.8M in basic social science research. Do you know what $1.8M in NSF money buys? It could pay to educate, feed, house, and provide health care for 30 graduate students for a year – 30 highly educated Texans who would leave Rice equipped with the knowledge and experience to improve our economic future. Grants like those researchers at Rice receive are integral to graduate education and social science research.

Cutting SBE will end up costing much more than you could save by eliminating it. Investment in basic science research is an investment in our future. Yes, cuts need to be made, but basic social science funding should be protected. The integration of all the basic sciences at the NSF represents one of our national treasures and yields competitive advantage. I’m writing to you because my Representative does not serve on the Committee, and you seemed like a man who would listen. I hope you hear from some of the people directly benefiting from this funding in your own district, maybe even at Rice. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Libby Hemphill, PhD
Assistant Professor
Illinois Institute of Technology
Chicago, IL

About TwitChange

As I understand it TwitChange is a set of eBay auctions that let’s you “buy” a slice of a celebrity’s Twitter activity. You can bid on getting them to follow you, mention you, retweet you, or all of the above. The money goes to a great cause – CARE – that helps women and girls escape poverty. What better way to celebrate International Women’s Day than working towards global social change, right?

Learn more at TwitChange

Celebrity Networks

Sure, getting a celebrity to follow, mention, or retweet you would be cool (I know I loved it when @HartHanson replied to me), but who could you reach with that single mention or retweet? In the spirit of social change, I set out to see what the networks of some celebrities on TwitChange look like to see just how much impact a winning bid could potentially buy.

Amy Brenneman

Ms Brenneman’s network is loosely connected, meaning that not many people who follow her follow each other. I could imagine that friends who follow one another on Twitter and who like Private Practice (or Judging Amy, etc.) to follow her, but the density (0.00019) of her network tells us that really individuals and not groups of friends follow her. Brenneman also has 23,450 people with 2 degrees – her followers and their followers. It’s likely that any Brenneman tweet reaches fewer people (not all of her followers retweet everything she says, obviously), but still, that’s quite a few people, especially when you compare it to your own network. Some other players (using centrality measures) in her network include @caterinatweets, @timmydaly, @kadeestrick, and @audraequalitymc. That her castmates (Caterina Scorsone, Tim Daly, KaDee Strickland, Audra McDonald) are also central in her network is not surprising – if you follow one person from Oceanside Wellness, you probably follow a couple. Here’s a quick-and-dirty rendering of @TheAmyBrenneman’s network:

In the next day or so, I hope to have similar info on the other three actors I mentioned, and I’ll render more interesting (and useful) graphs. While you wait, why not donate to CARE?

Anyway, Seth is responding to and offering some criticisms of Anderson’s new book – Free. In his response, Seth writes, “A good book review on Amazon is more reliable and easier to find than a paid-for professional review that used to run in your local newspaper, isn’t it?” My goodness, NO!

One of the many reasons I do still read newspapers, albeit usually their digital versions, is to get reliable, easy to find reviews of restaurants and books. I don’t want reviews of movies because I don’t want to know too much going into the theater. Sites like Amazon and Yelp have many, many book and restaurant reviews. My problem with these reviews is the same thing Seth is pointing out – anyone can write them. Let’s face it, most people should not write book reviews. Book reviews on Amazon, much like restaurant reviews on Yelp, are often poorly written, hard to follow, irrelevant, boring, the list goes on. Reading through readers’ reviews does not save me any time when decided to buy a book, and it may not even help me make that decision.

For a rather fair example, see the reviews of Heat, a really fun book by Bill Buford. Right on the page you can compare the usefulness of a review by Anthony Bordain and those made by readers. I say the example is fair because the readers’ reviews aren’t the worst examples I could find. One of the reviews begins, “I don’t go to restaurants. I don’t watch FOOD Channel. I don’t even order take-out. I’m just a pizza and burger guy with an occasional side trip to Taco Bell for my veggies. So why was I reading this book?” Please, why am I reading this review? I read reviews in established publishing sources because I know who the writers are and have some reason to trust them. 270 readers on Amazon thought the review that started with that line, about a cooking book, was helpful. That shows me that both the reviews and the people who rate them are not to be trusted when I’m deciding how to spend my book money.

Amazon’s statistics about what people buying books I liked, like Heat, also bought are more helpful. Those stats are about user behavior though, not user contributions. Not all reviews are equal. To have more reviews is not necessarily better – it just makes finding the useful ones harder. I have in the pipeline a site that will address that problem for restaurants by aggregating reliable, professional reviews – Food Pilgrim – but for now, I’ll just avoid the reader reviews on Amazon and stick to trusting the reviewers at Salon, the NY Times, and my local library.