Who are the

experts ?

What’s an

expert ?

Simon Schaffer

… It is not that we don’t trust anybody, it is that

we don’t know who to trust. We are surrounded

by experts …

… This is not a period when there has been a

crisis of expertise or a loss of deference. On the

contrary you can argue that people defer to an

unprecedentedly large number of experts …

How To Think About Science – CBC Radio

… If we had better, more accurate more effective

models of how expertise and trust work in our

culture (and above all how trust and expertise are

distributed with the sciences and with

technology), I think that this would be a crucially

progressive move in our politics as well …

How To Think About Science – CBC Radio

Simon Schaffer

digital traces of expertise

Visibility

Position

Activity

Influence

Vis

ibili

ty

Position

Connectivity (degree)

Connectivity (accessibility)

Centrality (betweeness)

Centrality (closeness)

Act

ivit

y

What is Twitter, a Social Network or a News Media?Haewoon Kwak, Changhyun Lee, Hosung Park, and Sue Moon19th International World Wide Web (WWW) Conference, April 26-30, 2010

Influence

Expert of what? and where?

• Web (hyperlinks)

• Science (references)

• Media (mention)

• Social networks (strong/weak ties)