Connecting to others – and the professional self? Exploring the structure and significance of academics’ social networks online

Katy Jordankaty.jordan@open.ac.uk@katy_jordan

Outline

• Background and research design

• Survey and network analysis

• Interviews and case studies

• Interim conclusions

Background and research design

Background

• Study set within a broader research context of Digital Scholarship (Weller, 2011).

• Social networking sites (SNS) are one medium for digital scholarly practices and many have been developed specifically for academics.

• Growing body of empirical research, but focusing on (i) quantifiable profile characteristics, and (ii) one site at a time.

Social networking sites“A social network site is a networked communication platform in which participants 1) have uniquely identifiable profiles that consist of user-supplied content, content provided by other users, and/or system-provided data;

2) can publicly articulate connections that can be viewed and traversed by others; and 3) can consume, produce, and/or interact with streams of user-generated content provided by their connections on the site.” (Ellison & boyd, 2013)

Key Generic SNS Academic SNS Modified academic tools Discontinued sites

1997

1997 SixDegree

s

1999 LiveJourna

l

1999 2002

2002 Friendster

20052003 2004

2003 LinkedIn, MySpace,

XING

2005 Academici

2004 Facebook

2006

2006 Twitter

2006 Diigo,

Slideshare, Zotero

2007

2007 2collab

2008

2008 Academia.edu, Epernicus, Labroots,

Lalisio, MyNetResearch, ResearchGate, Scholarz.net

2008 Mendeley, plus SNS

2009

2009 Diigo added SNS

2010

2010 Zotero added SNS

2011

2011 iamResearche

r, Piirus

2011 2collab

2012 2013

2013 Academici

, Lalisio

2002 HASTAC

2010 MyScienc

eWork

2012 Scholarz.ne

t

2011 Google+

Why look at networks?Social network structure linked to social capital

• Network size affects how wide a pool ego can draw upon for advice, and how widely information can be transmitted (Prell, 2012)

• Granovetter (1973) – the strength of weak ties

• Burt (2005) – structural holes and brokerage

• Online networks make ‘latent’ ties visible – Haynthornthwaite (2002)

• Link between online social networking and bridging and bonding social capital (Brooks et al., 2014; Ellison et al. 2014)

Why look at networks?Network of connections is an under-explored expression of online identity

• “Public displays of connection” (Donath & boyd, 2004)

• A “relational self-portrait” (Hogan & Wellman, 2014)

• Is the follower/following relationship a performance or an exhibition? (Hogan, 2010)

Research questionsWhat can we learn about the role that online social networks are playing in (re)defining academic roles and relationships?

• What is the structure of academics’ personal networks on social networking sites?

• How do academics construct and understand their personal networks?

• Does the structure and/or role of the network differ in nature according to academic career trajectories?

Research designMixed methods social network analysis

55 networks, sampled across a range of disciplines and job positions

~24 interviews & case studies (9 to date)

526 survey responses

Survey and network analysis

Survey summary• Academia.edu and ResearchGate are the main

academic SNS – but disciplinary differences in population.

• High agreement with notion of profile as online business card (77%).

• Opinions divided as to whether academic and personal identities are separated online.

• Items relating to career development more important to students and researchers.

• Items relating to teaching more important to lecturers and professors.

What is a personal network?

Choice of networks

Do not use professionallyCuriosity only

In case contacted

Track metrics

Discover jobs

Discover peersDiscover recommended papersContact peers

Post (work) content

Share links to authored content

Actively discuss research

Comment on research

Follow discussions

020406080

Do not use professionallyCuriosity only

In case contacted

Track metrics

Discover jobs

Discover peersDiscover recommended papersContact peers

Post (work) content

Share links to authored content

Actively discuss research

Comment on research

Follow discussions

020406080

ResearchGate

Twitter

Redrawn from NPG, 2014

Network metrics used

Analyses appropriate to personal network data comprise three types (Prell, 2012): network size; structure; and composition.

• Size: Number of nodes, in-degree, out-degree, number of communities.

• Structure: Density, betweenness centrality, brokerage, clustering, reciprocity.

Network size: Number of nodes, in-degree, out-degree

In-degree: Number of followersOut-degree: Number following

Ego

Node

Node

followingfollower

Network size: Number of nodes, in-degree, out-degree

Twitter Academic SNS

Network size: Number of communities

Network structure: Density and clustering

Network structure: Density and clustering

Academic SNS Twitter

Higher Density Lower Density

More Clustered Less Clustered

Network structure: Reciprocity

Network structure: Reciprocity

Academic SNS Twitter

Higher Reciprocity Lower Reciprocity

Network structure: Betweenness centralityBetweenness centrality approximates structural holes in the context of personal networks

Network structure: Brokerage rolesCoordinator Itinerant

brokerRepresentative

Gatekeeper Liaison

Broker is part of a community and mediates between other members of the same community

Broker mediates between members of the same community without being a member herself.

Broker mediates flow of information out of a community.

Broker mediates flow of information into a community.

Broker mediates between two different groups, neither of which she belongs to.

Network structure: Brokerage roles

Network analysis conclusions• Academics' personal networks developed on

academic SNS are smaller, more dense, more highly clustered around discrete communities and show greater reciprocity. In contrast, Twitter networks are larger and more diffuse.

Network analysis conclusions• On SNS more senior academics have higher in-

degree (i.e. more followers)

• On Twitter Professors and PhD students have the largest networks with other academics having smaller networks

• Brokerage types differ by site: ‘liaisons’ prevalent on Twitter, ‘representatives’ on academic SNS

• These differences may indicate that SNS preserve offline relationships and hierarchies more than Twitter

Interviews and case studies

Interviews & case studies• Explore meaning &

significance of network structures from participants viewpoints

• Nine undertaken so far – work-in-progress!

• Emergent themes

Communities: Institutions vs interests

Communities: Institutions vs interests

Different reasons for engaging with different platforms: Academic SNS

“We have quite strict rules about what we’re allowed to have on our departmental websites, which I totally understand even though I find them a bit frustrating, and so I periodically do and don’t have editing rights over my [university A] page, so I use my Academia.edu page as the place where my publications are available if somebody wants to find them, and I don’t really use it in order to interact with people, it’s much more if you want me this is where I am” - Harriet

“when I started the MRes that was when I started thinking about what research I really wanted to do, and where I wanted to place myself as an academic. So part of that process is sort of identifying your niche, and letting people know that you’re there, so I figured it might be useful for that.” - Jacob

“I see it as my portable repository of my papers, so whereas I have papers on my [institutional] page, this is the way that I can have papers that come with me no matter where I go.” - Emily

“to make myself searchable, REFable, that sort of thing” - Gillian

Different reasons for engaging with different platforms: Twitter

“In a way Twitter done right is like the social at the end of a conference, but permanently, and if you do it right, it has all those benefits to it. Nobody feels like they have to talk to you, but they all feel like they quite fancy it, and you end up chatting to really interesting people completely by accident that you never planned to, but in retrospect you wish that you had earlier, and that’s why it works. It works because of that balance of accident, that balance of serendipity.” - Jacob

“I might not know them, in that I’ve never met them, but I know someone else that works in their department or we have a co-author in common or something, we know each other, and we’d be happy to stand and chat if we met at a conference, but that just hasn’t happened yet.” - Frances“I got into a conversation with her about Shetland ponies, so when we meet, which probably will happen, we’ll be really friendly to each other, and without Twitter that’s not going to happen, you’re not going to have an email exchange with somebody like that. It’s the kind of thing that happens at a conference over a cup of coffee or whatever, but it takes much longer to happen.” - Harriet

Responsibilities and freedoms

“compared to an academic employed by a government science organisation, there’s a lot more freedom at a university, and then being a student you get a lot more freedom again, so I definitely think that the way that I act, there’s no consequences of what I do […] It’s your responsibility, you’re the one who’s putting the information out there, you’re the one who deals with the consequences.” - Emily

“there’s a lot of my department that are on Twitter, so a lot of the work of maintaining that account is retweeting, but then you have to be on top of the press releases and making sure that you’re tweeting about those, trying to tweet blog posts that might be associated with particular research projects, retweeting messages from departmental or university-level research groups that are relevant, so it’s a dissemination exercise, it’s not a conversation especially.” - David

“I think I’m really lucky in that my professional networks are sort of really aligned in terms of like their politics, so I’m not in grave danger of tweeting about something and getting into work and finding that the dean wants to speak to me about it, which I think some people that might be the case.” - Harriet

Interim conclusions

Interim conclusions and final thoughts

• Different reasons for engaging with different platforms - SNS as an online CV and portable repository. Twitter merges personal and professional for various reasons, and facilitates making new connections.

• Connections on Academic SNS reflect existing working relationships; Twitter connections are more varied and serendipitous, activating latent ties. These may build different types of social capital.

• Communities defined by institutions to a greater extent in academic SNS, and topics of interest in Twitter.

Interim conclusions and final thoughts

• Changing relationships with institutions, perceived responsibilities and freedoms. Are researchers free to network?

• Degree on Twitter does not correlate with academic seniority. Does the ease of making new connections disrupt offline hierarchies?

• Use of social media channels is highly nuanced, could considering all social media together be misleading?

• The social network facilities of academic SNS are under-used at present and are difficult to visualise - opportunity for sites to improve?

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