Sorin Adam Matei
Analysis, research, maps, and essays from Sorin Adam Matei.
The West Point Group on Network Science proposes a new method for determining the minimum number and the profile of the people in a network that need to be “seeded” with a message such that the message would become viral. In…
This is a learning module for the class Contemporary Social / Mass Media Theory taught at Purdue University by Sorin Adam Matei Can social media increase the effect of undesirable social communication processes, such as the echo chamber or spiral of silence?…
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…
What if we allowed the authors and the reviewers of academic papers to interact with each other and, horribile dictu, to know each other’s identies. This PLOS paper believes that we would get better reviews and better papers. Citation: Leek JT, Taub…
MSNBC opines that the recent massive stock sell-off reflects the panic that dominates the small investor scene. If truly irrational move, this panic might indicate that this is also a good time to invest. Thursday’s big sell-off, which saw the Dow Jones…
We are finally getting somewhere… Cloud computing, though, is more than a hyper-efficient means of distributing digital services. The cloud model is animated by a set of Internet technologies for juggling computing workloads in data centers far more efficiently than in the…
What you say if you got a $1.5 BILLION grant? Samuel Ting (Nobel Prize laureate, 1974, MIT professor) got precisely this amount over 10 years to put a new experimental device in space. The device was meant to detect anti-matter. Although intriguing,…
Facebook does not seem to have a very large advertising footprint. In fact, it relies in great measure on two major partners, Zynga, the producer of Farmville, and Groupon. Gaming and group buying partners are responsible for 2/3rds of Facebook’s revenue. While…
Image via Wikipedia Excellent NY TIMES coverage of the recent incident in the Gulf. We need more reporting like this, careful with nuances and not eager to hype a situation already bade. Environmental groups quickly issued news releases, arguing that the fire…
This is a learning module for the class Contemporary Social / Mass Media Theory taught at Purdue University by Sorin Adam Matei Elihu Katz, Paul Lazarsfeld, and Gabriel Tarde have already said that media are profoundly social. Newspapers have been read at breakfast for almost…
Does the old fashioned newsroom still matter? Image via Wikipedia This is a learning module for the class Contemporary Social / Mass Media Theory taught at Purdue University by Sorin Adam Matei Agenda setting theory was proposed in the early 1970s by Maxwell McCombs and…
This is a learning module for the class Contemporary Social / Mass Media Theory taught at Purdue University by Sorin Adam Matei Media System Dependency Theory Core principles MSD proposes that media and its audiences co-exist in a state of ecological dependency. They establish relationships…
This is a learning module for the class Contemporary Social / Mass Media Theory taught at Purdue University by Sorin Adam Matei Social Capital Theory proposes that effective social action and the wellbeing of social groups, from the smallest voluntary organization to entire societies, is…
How do we predict social behavior on social media? Shepperd and Taylor propose Expectancy Theory… The paper is also interesting for the connection it makes between group and personal expectations. I wonder, however, if the authors thought through the consequence of no…
This piece, which is available online, has become an instant classic… Billions of people participate in online social activities. Most users participate as readers of discussion boards, searchers of blog posts, or viewers of photos. A fraction of users become contributors of…