Saturday, June 27, 2026 Strategy, technology, media, and social systems

I Think

Sorin Adam Matei

Analysis, research, maps, and essays from Sorin Adam Matei.

Tag: Purdue University

Purdue Digital Storytelling Network Launched, partners with Google News Lab University

Today I launch a new teaching and research initiative which will empower Purdue students aspiring to embrace careers in big data, social media analytics, or communication. The initiative starts with a partnership with Google News Lab University. The partnership, which includes other…

Com 559 Syllabus – Current Trends in Mass Communication Research – From Mass Media to Social Media

Purdue University Fall 2017 Meeting time: Tuesday – Thursday, 12 – 1:20 PM, BRNG 2275 Office hours: BRNG 2140, 2:15 – 4 PM T-Th and by appointment Instructor: Sorin Adam Matei, smatei  at purdue edu According to the site Alexa.com, which tracks…

Toward deciphering the social media genome: big data and computational social science may explain social embriology

Nothing seems more random to the naked eye than the babble of online exchanges. Are the posting patterns on Wikipedia user pages or the answers offered to Q&A sites ruled by any discernible configurations? Do users engage in predictable posting/answering behaviors? More…

Lost flight MH370 last known locations and identified debris around the possible crash sites (maps, KMZ)

  The map below and the KMZ file of Lost Flight MH370 , summarize in real time the story of the search and hopefully eventual finding of lost flight MH370. Come back often or bookmark this page to get the latest geographic news. Or…

Practice Capital Concept Applied through Social Network Analysis to the C-Span Video Archive

A new concept, practice capital, which extends the concept of social capital to collaborative projects is proposed in my chapter to the upcoming volume on the research significance of the C-Span Video Archive. I should mention that the archive is hosted in…

KredibleNet Workshop at Stanford University

  On October 18, 2013 I co-organized a workshop in collaboration with MediaX (Martha Russell) and Social Media Research Foundation (Marc Smith) on Trust, Authority, and Credibility at IRISS, on the Stanford campus, in Palo Alto. My co-PIs on the NSF grant that…

Is Social Media a Spiral of Silence Machine? From “Daily Me,” to Homophily Bias, Filter Bubbles, and Echo Chamber Effects

 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?…

KredibleNet project awarded NSF grant, will study reputation in social media using network analysis

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…

Neil Armstrong, first man on the Moon and a Purdue graduate, dies at 82. Find the place and the precise coordinates of the Apollo 11 mission landing site on Google Earth map to remember him.

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…

Principles, tips, advice, and ideas for designing, creating, growing, maintaining, or using online – virtual communities

A list of principles for designing on-line communities created by Dr. Sorin A. Matei and his students registered in various versions of the Online Interaction Graduate Seminar at Purdue University Online / virtual community design principles Design guidelines are not guarantees. Many are necessary for…

Ubimark.info Collects Soundscapes Recordings for World Listening Day (Map)

Bryan Pijanowski, the head of the Soundscape Ecology Project at Purdue University, and Sorin Adam Matei, the author of this blog and the founder of the Ubimark publishing initiatives have set up a mapping site, http://Ubimark.info, to collect and map everyday sounds…

Group responsible for 2010 Wikileaks Denial of Service attacks against Amazon and Visa splits, reveals power elite, confirms main ideas of Virtual sociability book

The hacktivist group Anonymous, which was recently in the news for its strong-armed support of Wikileaks, is in the middle of a mini civil war. A group of secessionist members has revealed the online identities and other details (Ip addresses) of some…

Online Interaction Graduate Seminar to be offered during the fall semester 2011 at Purdue University

Next fall I will teach the Online Interaction Seminar at Purdue University. The class is listed as 47566 – COM 63200 – 001 and it will meet on Tuesday – Thursday from 1:30 pm to 2:45 pm PM. This is a fun…

Deciphering the social media genome: Toward an ecology of social roles in online collaborative spaces via Visible Symbiosis

Nothing seems more random to the naked eye than the babble of online exchanges. Are the posting patterns on Wikipedia user pages or the answers offered to Q&A sites ruled by any discernible configurations? Do users engage in predictable posting/answering behaviors? More…

The origins of media research: the effects paradigm

This is a learning module for the class Contemporary Social / Mass Media Theory taught at Purdue University by Sorin Adam Matei INTRODUCTION: Mass media has become a research issue during the 1930s and 1940s. This has imprinted it with an early concern with psychological…

What can uses and gratifications theory tell us about social media?

This is a learning module for the class Contemporary Social / Mass Media Theory taught at Purdue University bySorin Adam Matei Of the couple dozen theories that aim to explain how mass media impact society, how many of them are still valid today, when…

Does agenda setting theory still apply to social media?

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…

Can media system dependency account for social media? Or should communication infrastructure theory take care of it?

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…

The social impact of social media: creator or destroyer of social capital?

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…

Communication as social form: an autoecological perspective

Simmel – Image via Wikipedia by Sorin Adam Matei Professor, Purdue University citation: Matei, S A (2019). Communication as social form. [Online]. Available at: https://matei.org/ithink/2009/12/13/communication-as-social-form-an-autoecological-perspective/. Introduction: What is communication for? What role does communication play in society? Although it is quite obvious…

Virtual Omaha

Map of Omaha Beach German fortifications (blue dropets) laid over the American operational map for June 6, 1944 (misaligned due to Google Maps limitations). Clicking the button “Google Earth” will show the 3d Model of the German fortifications and will correctly align…