Using hybrid networks for the analysis of online communities

• ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2006)

Social network-based systems usually suffer from two major limitations: they tend to rely on a single data source (e.g. email traffic), and the form of network patterns is often privileged over their content. To go beyond these limitations we describe a system we developed to visualize and navigate hybrid networks constructed from multiple data sources - with a direct link between formal representations and the raw content. We illustrate the benefits of our approach by analyzing patterns of collaboration in a large Open Source project, using hybrid networks to uncover important roles that would otherwise have been missed.

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citation

Medynskiy, Y.; Ducheneaut, N. ; Farahat, A. O. Using hybrid networks for the analysis of online communities. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2006); 2006 April 22-27; Montreal; Canada. NY: ACM; 2006; 513-516.