Sorin Adam Matei
Analysis, research, maps, and essays from Sorin Adam Matei.
Assistant Vice President for Partnerships in Strategic Defense Innnovation and Professor of Communication at Purdue University, Director of the FORCES initiative leads research teams that study the relationship between technological and social systems using big data, simulation, and mapping approaches. He published papers and articles in Journal of Communication, Communication Research, Information Society, National Interest, and Foreign Policy. He is the author or co-editor of several books. The most recent is Structural differentation in social media. He also co-edited Ethical Reasoning in Big Data,Transparency in social media and Roles, Trust, and Reputation in Social Media Knowledge Markets: Theory and Methods (Computational Social Sciences) , all three the product of the NSF funded KredibleNet project. Dr. Matei's teaching portfolio includes technology and strategy, online interaction, and digital media analytics classes. A former BBC World Service journalist, his contributions have been published in Esquire and several leading Romanian newspapers. In Romania, he is known for his books Boierii Mintii (The Mind Boyars), Idolii forului (Idols of the forum), and Idei de schimb (Spare ideas).
Note: This post and the charts will be updated throughout the evening. Come back often for more recent details. Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were relatively close in number of Google News searches, which is an indicator of social reach on online…
It’s official: The National Science Foundation hereby awards a grant of $179,594 to Purdue University for support of the project “KredibleNet – Building a research community and proposing a research agenda for the study and modeling of reputation and authority across informal…
io9 makes fun of some awesome, albeit non-standard, Eastern European Sci-Fi posters from the 1970s and 1980s. Some of them, especially the Polish ones, are truly artistic… They were produced by Polish or Czech graphic artists of the first rank who were…
This article, which discusses the Ringelmann effect (the larger the team, the smaller the individual effort), dovetails very nicely with our own work on Visible Effort. In fact, our work is a variation on the Köhler effect: top team collaborators try harder as…
What is computational social science? It is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of vast, intact social networks and “big data” projects made possible by social media. Nature synthesizes the latest advances in this review article… Our own contributions in mining Wikipedia to decipher…
Neil Armstrong died on August 25 of heart failure following surgery. A former military pilot, he landed the moon landing module with only 16 seconds of fuel left. A Purdue undergraduate student (as was the last man on the moon, ) and…
Mars Rover Curiosity has landed at 4.59S / 137.44 E coordinates, in Gale crater, not far from a ridge, on a smooth flat plain. It landed just like it was expected within an elipsis just a few kilometers wide. This photograph released…
The Olympics bring together people from around the globe and sometimes it ends in love. That’s what happened to Katy and Matt Emmons, both Olympic rifle shooters who met at the 2004 Athens Games. Matt Emmons talks about the Olympic love story…
Microsoft Surface tablet prices swing widely between $599 and $1000… Microsoft can’t realistically sell it over $999 and in fact needs to go under, somewhere around $499… More At the Surface unveiling, Microsoft announced that the tablets would be “priced competitively” with…
See on Scoop.it – Mapping current events General Keith Alexander, head of the National Security Agency, gave an address at the Defcon hacking conference in Las Vegas Friday saying “Sometimes you guys get a bad rap. From my perspective, what you’re doing to…
See on Scoop.it – Virtual community and societies A TV/Web report on the digital revolution and how it’s changing our lives, with video stories, interviews, and user-generated video on relationships, information overload, education, the military, parenting, brain development, and more. See on…
See on Scoop.it – Virtual community and societies Want to know what Tom Daley’s bedroom looks like? Or how Matthew Mitcham amuses himself in the Olympic Park between training sessions? Or where 5,000 can sit down to dinner? See on socialmediatoday.com
See on Scoop.it – Virtual community and societies ROI eludes many folks in the social media space. Not because social marketeers aren’t able to, it’s just damn difficult to assign cause and effect to a very organic and often nebulous activity. See…
See on Scoop.it – Virtual community and societies A newspaper by Pekka Puhakka – updated daily with a curated selection of articles, blog posts, videos and photos. (The Location Aware Services Daily is out! See on paper.li
See on Scoop.it – Virtual community and societies In preparing for our morning show we were doing some research and came across an old story that showed that StumbleUpon was actually driving more traffic than FaceBook in January of 2011 and we wondered…
See on Scoop.it – Virtual community and societies This really is for anyone who is new to this exciting business! Using quotation marks is something that confuses many online. People usually ask “why (Keyword Research! See on www.warriorforum.com
See on Scoop.it – Virtual community and societies At launch, Path seemed like the ultimate social network for mobiles. It was as addictive to scroll as Instagram, but richer in actions like Facebook. See on www.fastcodesign.com
See on Scoop.it – Virtual community and societies BioSpace Spotlights the growing Midwest Life Science Community [February 7, July – 2:01 AM PST]: (RT @investorpoint: BioSpace Spotlights the growing Midwest Life Science Community http://t.co/Ax38fd8z...)… See on www.investorpoint.com
Although Greenland, just like most of the northern hemisphere has been under a succession of record breaking head domes, the recently reported news that most of the Greenland ice sheet is melting needs to be taken with a grain of salt. The NASA data…
The news from Spain is dire: its local governments are bankrupt and we can expect a domino effect. The cause? Overspending: Spain’s debt hangover follows an era of cheap credit that the birth of a common currency helped create. When the eurozone…
Our colleague, H. Porter Abbott, at UCSB teaches a great course on Narrative theory, which includes this awesome reading list… Enjoy: Abbott, H. Porter. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. Bal, Mieke. Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of…
We finally have a solution for global warming. A discussion on the board The Straight Dope about the likely effect of a nuclear war brought up the hypothesis that a nuclear war on a large scale could produce a mini-nuclear winter. Why?…
Chinese cyberspace and social media are rife with rumors about a lingering or barely averted coup. The rumors are associated with the recent sacking of an important provincial Party secretary, the Congqing boss Bo Xilai (see details). The scion of a…
One of the most powerful Chinese regional Party bosses and scion of an old Communist family has been dismissed and his political fate remains unknown. A report published on an unofficial Chinese site reveal much of the current debates and infighting at…
In a an extremely detailed report to be delivered to the computer security conference, Imperva, an IT security consulting company describes how the hacker Anonymous group launched Operation Pharisee to bring down the Vatican web site. The report is to be presented…
Prediction market Intrade evaluates The Artist’s chances to win the Oscar for best movie at over 90% and Dujardin’s chance to be awarded best actor at 70%. In the meanwhile, HSX indicates strong bets in the same direction. Sources Traders aim to…
privacy (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee) The Obama Administration proposed on February 24 a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights that would regulate how private corporations and business entities handle private data. The announcement includes: A Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights The Consumer Privacy…
Filicudi e Lipari (Photo credit: CyboRoZ) Lipari School on Computational Complex Systems announces its 2012 annual session. Novel data mining research and modeling of complex techno-socio-economic systems will be presented. According to the call: Two kinds of participants are welcome. Students: Participants…
Miriad internal conflicts throw Pakistan into an never ending cycle of mini-civil wars: families killing their women for “illicit affairs”, human right activists beaten to death for testifying against abusive police practices, politicians assassinated without any retribution. The Economist draws the line…
A wonderful list of Twitter Sentiment Analysis Tools collated by Twittersentiment.appspot.com… Twitter Analysis Tools look at the meaning of the tweets and divides them into negative and positive communication items. Since the original list missed some sites, feel free to add yours…
A BBC correspondent laid eyes on a very insightful report on the continued strong relationship between Pakistan and Taliban leaders. The conclusion remains the same: we seem to be at war with Pakistan without being able to acknowledge it. The BBC’s Quentin…
April 15 is the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic on its maiden voyage in 1912. The wreck of the ship was found in two pieces, the bow and the stern, by Ballard in 1985, who released the precise coordinates of…
Following the successful social media exercise of predicting the outcomes of the nomination race in Iowa using Google Searches and Tweets, here is a preview of what could be in store for the candidates in New Hampshire. Google search trends in the…
This self-updating chart provides the latest trends in Google searches for candidate names. According to this post, search frequency seemed to be related to candidate “pull.” Santorum was not a surprise at all for those that followed the social media buzz closely. What…
Mashable hints that Twitter might have caught a whiff of Santorum’s possible dash in the last straight line before the finish in the Iowa caucus. There is something to say about it. Romney lost the lead not only on Twitter but also in…
Description The course is a guide to the emerging field of educational and scholarly theories and practices that use networked computational resources and platforms to promote learning and research. It will investigate how technologies and the practices associated with them might generate…
Current college students are called “digital natives.” They are heralded as a new type of intellectual foragers, who can multitask better, gather information faster, and spread it with more efficiency than their adult peers. Nothing less true, affirms Deresiewicz in this scathing…
Via Scoop.it – Foreign AffairsRussians replaced half of their corrupt parliament with 30% old style communists and 20% brown-red nationalists… And some call this progress… This excellent The Economist analysis say it as it is: Russia is stuck between the past and…
The first 10 years of Chinese membership in WTO and of trade with the US at almost no import/export tarrifs: Chinese rural poverty rate declined from 10 to 3% US families could spend an extra $600 a year on cheaper goods US…
Via Scoop.it – Foreign AffairsThe Stop Online Privacy Act would block traffic from sites that stream and disseminate on a mass scale pirated content. Many say that this an attempt to censor what people see and share online. Others say, however, that…
What is the entropy level of this team? (Apud Paulo Coelho and many other internet peddlers of humor)
Digital Humanities Showcase: Walter Lord’s Day of Infamy mapped Walter Lord’s meticulously documented book “Day of Infamy” recounts the trivia of every day life at Pearl Harbor on that last morning of peace, December 7, 1941, when the Japanese planes attacked the…
Via Scoop.it – Foreign AffairsAstronomers report the discovery of an Earth-like planet about 600 light years from our solar system. It is probably several times greater than earth. Its year is 290 days long and it could be a balmy 72 degrees.Via…
Via Scoop.it – Virtual community and societies7 billion worth of vulnerability. Aircraft carriers are weighing just as heavy on the US amerd forces, as battleships did before Pearl Harbor. In this day and age of deficits, reconsidering the role of he aircarrier…
On my way to lunch I pass by the extraordinary gem that is the Purdue Art Gallery. An unpretentious room, painted white, with no outside windows, the gallery exhibits on a regular basis the highest quality art, from all corners of the…
Via Scoop.it – Virtual community and societiesDoes social media lead to rich, networked lives and increased social capital? Or not? A Berkman center seminar featuring Professor Charles Nesson as Provocateur and Ellen Condliffe Lagemann (Bard College), Peter Levine (Tufts University), Harry Lewis…
Via Scoop.it – Virtual community and societiesSubscribers of Microsoft’s Xbox Live, rejoice. Starting on Tuesday, Dec. 6, you will be able to watch television programming from the Xbox 360 console. You will also be able to search Hulu and Netflix via voice.…
INTL. JOURNAL OF HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION, 27(4), 405–408, 2011 http://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2011.544971 Book Review Derek Hansen, Ben Shneiderman, and Marc A. Smith. Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL: Insights from a Connected World. Burlington, MA: Morgan Kauffman, 2011. 284 pages. ISBN: 978-0-12-382229-1 Reviewed by Sorin…
Via Scoop.it – Virtual community and societiesHow the new dimensions of information are transforming business — and life (David Weinberger speaks that the Berkeley School of Information)Via www.ischool.berkeley.edu
Via Scoop.it – Mapping current eventsUS drone downed and captured almost intact by Iranian air force… Not the first incident of this kind.Via www.guardian.co.uk
Via Scoop.it – Mapping current events N. Gregory Mankiw, an economics professor, has a message for students who walked out of his class at Harvard last month: The study of economics should be viewed as a method, not a doctrine.Via www.nytimes.com
Via Scoop.it – Virtual community and societiesA good example of having the cake and eating it too… Weinberg both decries the Internet’s unleasing of personal knowledge and cheers for it… “One of the authors of “The Cluetrain Manifesto” says the hyperlinked…