10,000 Facebook Members or Bust! Analyzing Social Network Trends
Jennifer Golbeck is an assistant professor in the College of Information Studies, Maryland's iSchool. (University of Maryland)
A Facebook group with nothing but that name and a picture of a squishy smiley face has collected more than 10,000 members since its formation a week ago, a classroom assignment at the University of Maryland designed to determine how trends go viral on the social networking site.
By midnight deadline on Feb. 25, it was the only one of 45 student sites to reach that threshold, followed by 10,000 HATERS OF DUKE BASKETBALL, with 8,292 members.
Why did some of the sites go viral and others go south? That’s a question the undergraduates are considering in Assistant Professor Jennifer Golbeck’s new course, Social Networks: Technology and Society.
“Figuring that out is a very fascinating research problem — there’s so much more we need to understand,” says Golbeck, a computer scientist who studies how people use online social networks like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. Last fall, she, a doctoral candidate and an undergraduate student released the first detailed study on Twitter use by Congress. (more…)
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Non-Profits Seen as Less Competent
Jennifer Aaker is the General Atlantic Professor of Marketing at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University.
Consumers perceive non-profit organizations as being “warm,” but not particularly competent, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.
“Across three experiments, we found that consumers hold stereotypes, or shorthand, blanket impressions about non-profit and for-profit organizations and that these stereotypes predict crucial marketplace behaviors, such as the likelihood of visiting of a website and willingness to buy a product from the organization,” write authors Jennifer Aaker (Stanford University), Kathleen D. Vohs (University of Minnesota), and Cassie Mogilner (University of Pennsylvania).
The authors found that people generally view for-profit companies are being competent, but also as being devoid of warmth, which does not lead people to admire them.
In contrast, they found that consumers perceive non-profits as being warmer than for-profits, but they also believe they are less competent than for-profits. Therefore, if consumer stereotypes are not interrupted, people are more likely to buy products from for-profits than non-profits.
Non-profits can boost public perception by understanding and using tools that most effectively convey competence, the authors write. For example, non-profits can utilize sub-branding, endorsements, and sponsored events to avoid the general perception that they are in some way incompetent. (more…)
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Unique Study Delves Into Toronto’s Entertainment District’s Hot Spot Violence
Each day people living in large urban centres are injured as the result of violent acts such as physical assault. While existing research tells us where such events are most likely to happen, a new study by Canadian scientists has gone one step further.
“While studies have been done on the geography of violent crime, few researchers have looked at what we call the spatio-temporal patterns of violent injury—not just where these are most likely to occur, but also when,” says lead author Dr.Michael Cusimano, a scientist at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.
Toronto has a single ambulance service serving the emergency needs of its 2.4 million residents, he adds. Each ambulance dispatch is precisely geocoded by longitude and latitude and also time-stamped, providing unique information about the ”where” and ”when” of injury. (more…)
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Pop-Culture Scrubbing Clean The Vampire Image
He’s a vampire fit to meet the family: hunky, lovesick and more interested in kissing lips than biting necks.
Meet Edward Cullen, model undead citizen and epitome of so-called “vampire lite.”
Rob Weiner, a pop-culture author and expert at Texas Tech University, offers one take on the implications of Stephanie Meyers’ fanged teen romance saga as moviegoers snap up tickets for the Nov. 20 release of “New Moon.”
Weiner is an associate humanities librarian for the Texas Tech Libraries who lectures on the history of horror cinema.
He said Meyers’ protagonists are an example of recent vampire literature and filmmaking – dubbed vampire lite – that waters a traditionally bloody genre down to something more palatable for younger audiences.
These are not the eating machines of movies like “30 Days of Night” – or even “Dracula.” No, the ghouls of yore have been scrubbed down, cleaned up and housebroken. (more…)
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Interest in Paranormal Fuels Rise in Halloween’s Popularity
Ghost Hunters - TAPS: One of the ghost hunting reality shows.
Halloween 2009 is expected to be a $4.75 billion retail event in the United States. And while that’s down about a billion from last year due to the economy, it still adds up to a lot of interest, especially among 18-to-24-year-olds who spend the most on the holiday.
Why is Halloween on the rise as a popular American celebration? Many young adults just want an excuse to dress up and party. But there is more to it than that, says Lynn Schofield Clark, associate professor of communication at the University of Denver. There is also greater interest in the paranormal and the supernatural.
“A lot of times it’s more fun to ponder what might be true than to remain mired in the realities of everyday life,” says Clark, author of From Angels to Aliens: Teenagers, the Media, and the Supernatural (Oxford University Press 2005).
According to recent Gallup polls, belief in aliens is up, as is belief in ghosts and in paranormal activity. Clark points out that there are now seven reality programs on television about ghost hunting. (more…)
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More UK Students Studying Engineering and Physical Sciences
More students than ever before have been accepted onto science and engineering related degree courses this autumn, according to the University and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS). Science is also now the most popular subject at school according to a new poll of children aged 5 to 18.
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Chief Executive Dave Delpy has welcomed the news and says this strengthens the case for supporting our future scientists and engineers:
“With the increase in undergraduate interest in science and engineering, we anticipate greater numbers of PhD students applying for research funding over the years to come. It is therefore more vital than ever to create a support network for school children to encourage them to engage with science and engineering at an early stage to help them become career scientists and engineers.” (more…)
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Second Life Data Offers Window Into How Trends Spread
Do friends wear the same style of shoe or see the same movies because they have similar tastes, which is why they became friends in the first place? Or once a friendship is established, do individuals influence each other to adopt like behaviors?
Social scientists don’t know for sure. They’re still trying to understand the role social influence plays in the spreading of trends because the real world doesn’t keep track of how people acquire new items or preferences.
But the virtual world Second Life does. Researchers from the University of Michigan have taken advantage of this unique information to study how “gestures” make their way through this online community. Gestures are code snippets that Second Life avatars must acquire in order to make motions such as dancing, waving or chanting. (more…)
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Study Finds Researchers Open to Knowledge Transfer
Christian Dagenais, director of the Centre de liaison sur l'intervention et la prévention psychosociales (CLIPP).
Scientists like to pay it forward. According to a new study by Université de Montréal professors Christian Dagenais and Michel Janosz, most academics are quite open to knowledge transfer.
“We debunked the myth that researchers are so consumed by their work that they don’t have time for knowledge transfer,” says Dagenais, a professor at the Université de Montréal and director of the Centre de liaison sur l’intervention et la prévention psychosociales (CLIPP).
Although knowledge transfer is becoming a prerequisite of most funding agencies, universities had little data on what the research community thought about sharing results from their life’s work. Until now.
The study was conducted by the VINCI group (Valorisation de l’innovation et du capital intellectuel) and surveyed scientists from 16 research units affiliated to the Université de Montréal. As part of the study, 216 researchers filled out a questionnaire, while 30 academics and five funding agencies were also interviewed. (more…)
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Texas School Board Set to Vote on Challenge to Evolution
Elaine Howard Ecklund, associate director of Rice’s Center on Race, Religion and Urban Life, directs the national study on religion and spirituality among scientists at top universities.
The Texas Board of Education’s upcoming contentious vote this week on a new science curriculum that outlines the way evolution is taught in Texas public schools could set a national trend.
At issue is whether a teacher should raise doubts about evolution when teaching biology and other science classes. The impacts could be felt far and wide, as school textbook publishers write to Texas’ standards. A change in the way Texas teaches its students could change the way other states look at the issue.
Rice University sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund, associate director of Rice’s Center on Race, Religion and Urban Life, directs the national study on religion and spirituality among scientists at top universities. Religion Among Academic Scientists is the first study in more than 20 years to systematically gather data on this topic. Ecklund recently conducted in-depth interviews with 300 scientists and completed a survey of nearly 1,700 scientists on their views on science and religion.
“This vote has monumental implications,” Ecklund said. “The connection between religion and science is at stake.” (more…)
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Darwin’s Evolution Under Attack: Top Stories of the Year
Paris - La Grande Galerie de l'Evolution - 2007 (Etienne Cazin CC)
Evolution is under attack across the U.S. Last year, the teaching of evolution was challenged in scores of schools. During the same period, six states introduced (and Louisiana passed) “academic freedom laws” that discredit evolution and smuggle creationist teachings into the classroom. (For more, see http://ncseweb.org/evolution/education/academic-freedom).
2009 doesn’t look much better. Oklahoma is first to bat with a strong antievolution bill, followed by Mississippi with a bill requiring warning labels on textbooks. Other states that may consider similar legislation in 2009 include Michigan, Florida, Missouri, New Mexico, and South Carolina.
Creationists are also undermining the teaching of evolution by sabotaging state science standards, with a battle currently raging among the members of the Texas state board of education. And in too many classrooms around the country, due to local pressure, their own misconceptions, or a lack of training, teachers are not teaching evolution. (more…)
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