Exploring the behavior of social networking.
commenTree
To visually study the interactions between users of an online social network, how these user interactions are commenced, and what their ramifications are.
The social networking phenomenon MySpace presents a semi tangible space where users may interact and connect through both textual and visual comments that anyone may observe. How do interactions occur in the virtual realm? Is real human interaction amplified or reduced? By what means do these network connection arise between users.
The project titled, 'commenTree' uses Adobe Flash to essentially mine through hundreds of thousands of MySpace profiles, their biographies, their interests, and their comments. This data is then presented in the form of a graphical network interface displaying users in a organically connected manner. CommenTree aims to explore the various functions meshing real world and online interactions. Is it any longer necessary for real world interactions to be the basis of these connections which then migrate to the virtual realm? And how do the comments that users leave each other play into this?
A little bit about where this data arose from
The data for commenTree was originally collected for a project titled BioMemetics. BioMemetics was deveoloped by the collaboration of Derek Lomas, Ruth West, Todd Margolis, Jurgen Shultz, Jared Chandler, Tiffany Hopkins, Social Movement Laboratory, CRCA, and Calit2.
A Brief description of BioMemetics from its creators:
Abstract:
"The product of hybrid science-art research, BioMemetics is a modular visualization of the structure and dynamics of online social activity within Myspace.com. Developed as an interactive 20-screen display to facilitate large-scale online ethnography, observers track the propagation of viral media and the competition for attention within a rich online cultural ecology. BioMemetics reveals the biological nature of online social activity by generating a global view of collective human engagement in an age of massive participatory media production and exchange."
We were generously offered the database of myspace.com users that was created for the BioMemetics project as a resource for further study. With this data the idea of studying the reasons and means that users of an online social network arose.