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Lurking and Social NetworksWhile having lunch with Lilia (who gave a great sketch of how our conversation developed) we talked about her new topic of interest, lurking. Lurking The most obvious characteristic of a lurker is that he’s at the fringe of a group, listening and observing. Being at the fringe may seem like a bad place from the core, but in fact is a good position to build bridges to other groups, and be aware of other groups in the vicinity. In a face to face setting like a pub or a meeting of some kind, a lurker is visible, often shortly introduced after which the focus of attention shifts to the established group members again. In on-line settings things are different. In some fora lurkers are encouraged to introduce themselves and then adviced to lurk, i.e. observe and learn for a while. But at all times there is no way of knowing how many lurkers are there that you are unaware of. As lurkers are possible bridges to other groups, I as a blogger, would like to know: Serverlogs can give some clues, and I keep a close watch on them. Dave Winer's RSS-tool also brings new info to light.
 network with almost only strong ties Is this mix of strong and weak ties that forms my micro-blogosphere also a major factor of importance if you suffer from the echo-chamber effect? Where strong ties are the source of resonance, and the absence or presence of weak ties determine wether that cluster of strong ties is closed to input from the outside world?  network with strong ties and numerous weak ties, preventing echo chambers Meshing of Networks There are different levels of meshing one can distinguish. Echo-chambers, my guess is, form most easily in places (groups of blogs) that have total meshing, and have no 'capacity' left to connect to less meshed 'regions' in a network. Lurkers are in that case nodes in a sub-optimally meshed network. They're there, but you are not necessarily aware of them. Magic Numbers If we relate this to blogs and Clay Shirky's power law, teenage diaries blogs are possibly primarily on the 12/total meshing levels, professional content blogs are probably all in the 50 to 150 ranges, with distinct stability levels (my blog went from 0 to 12 inbound blogs then stabilized, then grew to just over fifty inbound blogs and stabilized again.) Above 150 people are more sparsely connected and start looking for beacons or leaders to orient themselves socially. This is the range where the broadcasting type blogs are, the A-listers. Landscapes Oh and yeah, we also ate during lunch, not just talked. UPDATE: Matt starts wondering about tools for lurkers.  Comments
Cool diagram! Here is a picture of our political 'echo chambers'... this book network is a proxy for the social networks behind it. http://www.orgnet.com/divided.html Thanks Valdis! That is a great picture of echochambers. (Ton) Oops... forgot. Landscapes... in Cleveland a local Econ Devel orgnaization has a "Landscape Project" to map all of key players [individuals, groups, organizations] involved in economic development in NE Ohio. The networks they will map will include social, business, partnership, investment, ... From the 'As Is' map they hope to build the 'Could Be' community! I'd love to map "our corner" of blogosphere (let's say starting from BlogWalk crowd) to see if our blog reading preferences fit "echo-chamber" or open format... Posted by: Lilia at February 4, 2004 09:30 PMfor more on magic numbers and the echo chamber ;-) http://radio.weblogs.com/0114726/2003/02/12.html Thanks Ross, Thanks for this article. I am a doctoral student exploring lurking in formal online course discussions. I am finding that lurkers are also learning, albeit differently. Also, I am finding that in the formal ediucation context, when the teachers decide to make discussion participation compulsory, they may be inhibiting lurkers from learning due to many reasons. I was wondering how the picture would look for an online course in formal HE set up. It may be the same as the one you have drawn for the 'lurker' learner; but different for the teacher, perhaps? Shalni Posted by: Shalni at February 13, 2004 10:33 AMInteresting comments about those on the fringe of an online community. I've been spending the last few weeks working on a project of my own design - investigating online communities and how to deepen interaction and improve dialogue. I'm keeping my research in blog format too, if you're interested [Link]. I've only just started this semester, so the ball isn't rolling that fast yet. :) I've lurked around a few blogs, mostly just unable to offer any sort of comment because of lack of ideas or just being uninspired. I wonder how it's possible to engage those readers though? One thing I've noticed is that a few pictures go a long way toward getting someone to comment. Oh, and just so that my "lurking" can benefit both of us, here's how I found my way on to your blog -- http://www.headshift.com/archives/001001.cfm This relates to a paper (http://www.critical-learning.co.uk/html/wiki_paper_1.html) I have written with some colleagues about students involvement with a course on-line. Lurking should be seen as 'legitimate peripheral participation' in a community of practice rather than as a problem. Posted by: David Andrew at February 14, 2004 05:33 PMLilia makes a good point. I suspect there is a large element of "echo-chamber" in KM Blogging, but hopefully enough external links to provide interesting (off-beat) leads too. The encouraging thing here is the focus on the links, not the members. I'm a firm believer in the fact that knowledge is about the characterisation of relationships (in terms of purpose) rather than the snippets / nodes / facts at their ends. Posted by: ian glendinning at February 24, 2004 09:48 AMI like your ideas. Lurking. I must be a lurker. This is how I got to this unlikely spot. Google: "points in documentation" http://excitedutterances.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_excitedutterances_archive.html http://denham.typepad.com/km/2004/02/documentation_k.html http://matt.blogs.it/2004/02/13.html#a1321 Posted by: Saundra Counce, RN at September 15, 2004 06:27 AM |
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Lilia Efimova
Martin Roell
Gary L. Murphy
Sebastien Paquet
Sebastian Fiedler
Frank Patrick
Thomas Burg
Ross Mayfield
Terry Frazier
David Weinberger
Dina Mehta
Rick Klau
Stuart Henshall
Elizabeth Lawley
Spike Hall
Andy Boyd
Phil Wolff
Matt Mower
Jim McGee
Olaf Brugman
Andrea Janssen
David Gurteen
John Moore
Elmine Wijnia
Chris Macrae
David Pollard
Julian Elvé
David Buchan
Denham Grey
Judith Meskill
Ian Glendinning
George Por
Paul J Kelly
