401 Access Denied , 403 Forbidden , 404 Not Found , 500 Internal Server Error & the Firehose There is this thing called the firehose. I've witnessed mathematicians, game theorists, computer scientist and engineers (apparently there is a distinction), economists, business scholars, and social scientist salivate over it (myself included). The Firehouse, though technically reserved …
Data Dealer is Disastrous
(or, Unfortunately, Algorithms Sound Boring.) Finally, a video game where you get to act like a database! This morning, the print version of the New York Times profiled the Kickstarter-funded game "Data Dealer." The game is a browser-based single-player farming-style clicker with a premise that the player "turns data into cash" by playing the role of …
How is the Brazilian Uprising Using Twitter?
By Andrés Monroy-Hernández and Emma Spiro More than a million Brazilians have joined protests in over 100 cities throughout Brazil in the past few weeks. Since their early beginning as a "Revolta do Busão" (Bus rebellion) to reduce bus fares, the protests now include a much larger set of issues faced by Brazilian society. Protesters …
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Help us expand relationship-app study to NYC, Philadelphia, and beyond!
UPDATE: We're now in the process of expanding this study to include other relationship apps besides Couple, including: Avocado, Between, Duet, LoveByte, etc. If you use one or more of these apps, we'd love to connect! Since our earlier call for participants, I’ve been scouring the Boston area looking for people to interview who use the relationship-app, …
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Old Against New, or a Coming of Age? Rethinking Broadcasting in an Era of Electronic Media
In exciting news, Stacy Blasiola, R. Stuart Geiger and I are announcing a call for papers for a Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media Special Issue. Please pass on to your networks, or even better, send us an abstract. Call for Papers Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media Special Issue Old Against New, or a …
What do we know about microsocial network apps? Not enough! Help!
Couple (previously Pair) is an innovative app designed to help couples stay in touch. It's one among an increasing number of microsocial platforms that cater to small groups rather than large networks. In the case of Couple, it's a social network of just two. While there is a ton of research on scalable social networking sites like …
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Writing the Casual Games Syllabus
(or, "I don't know how to skim a game.") Here's my question: What is the ideal list of 16 games that, if you played them, would give you a picture of all that is possible in gaming? Oh, yeah, and they have to be fast, quick-to-learn, and mostly free (hence the "casual" in the title). …
Get Over IT! Social @Work is Smart (and Inevitable)
Practically everyone uses social media, and most workers use them at work. In fact, as a Microsoft study revealed this week, 84 percent of information workers use non-work social networks, and 60 percent of them use them from work at least once a day. At the same time, the survey found that more than 30 …
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Challenges for Health in a Networked Society
In February, I had the great fortune to visit the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as part of their "What's Next Health" series. I gave a talk raising a series of critical questions for those working on health issues. The folks at RWJF have posted my talk, along with an infographic of some of the challenges …
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thoughts on Pew’s latest report: notable findings on race and privacy
Yesterday, Pew Internet and American Life Project (in collaboration with Berkman) unveiled a brilliant report about "Teens, Social Media, and Privacy." As a researcher who's been in the trenches on these topics for a long time now, none of their finding surprised me but it still gives me absolute delight when our data is so …
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Social Media Collective 