Monday, August 10, 2026 Strategy, technology, media, and social systems

I Think

Sorin Adam Matei

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

Tag: Social Sciences

Communication and Collaboration in Open Source Software Projects: A Hazard Model of Sourceforge projects

Open Source Software projects that grow strong and well are associated with strong core developer groups, active peripheral communication and high communication interactivity, and external testing groups. In effect, leaders and openness to outside world are the key to success. They are…

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?…

In Search of the Ur-Wikipedia: Universality, Similarity, and Translation in the Wikipedia Inter-language Link Network

A notable paper about Wikipedia versions and interactions across linguistic boundaries Wikipedia has become one of the primary encyclopaedic in- formation repositories on the World Wide Web. It started in 2001 with a single edition in the English language and has since…

The Visible Past / Open Context Loosely Coupled Model for Digital Humanities Ubiquitous Collaboration and Publishing: Collaborating Across Print, Mobile, and Online Media

Authors: Sorin Adam Matei, Eric Kansa, Nicholas Rauh. Abstract: The paper presents a platform for supporting academic collaboration and publishing created by flexibly linking Visible Past, a web collaboration and digital-print publishing with Open Context, a geo-historical data archiving and publishing service.…

Purdue University Brian Lamb School of Communication hosts Marc Smith, NodeXL founder, social media and network analyis scholar

Marc Smith, cyber sociologist, product developer, Connected Action Chief Scientist, and leader of the Social Media foundation will visit the West Lafayette Purdue campus between September 22-23 and will give a talk about one of his most important projects, NodeXL, on Thursday,…

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…

About the VOSON Project | Virtual Observatory for the Study of Online Networks (VOSON)

An ambitious Social Netwok Analysis site… The World Wide Web (WWW) has changed how humans interact; for some scholars, we now live in the “Age of the Network”. As online populations grow and the quantity and quality of interactions improve with new…

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…

Is two-step flow theory still relevant for social media research?

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…

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…

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…

Social media and identity: From Goffman to Sherry Turkle, Meyrowitz and beyond

This is a learning module for the class Contemporary Social / Mass Media Theory taught at Purdue University by Sorin Adam Matei Identity theories and social media What cultural and intellectual forces account for the social and intellectual ethos that fuels the social media revolution?…

Social cognitive theory, social learning, self-efficacy and social media

Albert Bandura, right Image by psicologiautal via Flickr This is a learning module for the class Contemporary Social / Mass Media Theory taught at Purdue University by Sorin Adam Matei Social cognitive theory main tenets Albert Bandura’s (b. 1925) career spans more than 6 decades,…