ISS Postdoctoral Associate/Networks Team 2005-08
Howard T. Welser recently completed his PhD in sociology from the University of Washington. He studies how the intersection of institutions and social interaction can shape collective outcomes. For instance: how might competition for status affect contribution to online discussion groups? How might systems that record and publicize group members' contributions affect levels of investment and retention? In addition to status achievement in avocations he is interested in the development of institutions and social roles, the emergence of cooperation, and network structure in computer mediated interaction.
Ted's current work leverages the flood of data from computer mediated systems of interaction to study general social processes, an interest that grew through collaboration with researchers in the Community Technology group at Microsoft Research. This research has focused on how social networks can reveal key details of social processes. One project tracks how structural features of bloggers' local networks can predict continued participation. Another project studies how structural signatures can reveal social roles in online interaction, which can help users of those settings to distinguish authors likely to provide good advice from those peddling bunk.
His collaborations at the ISS study social interaction in Wikipedia, including projects on social network structure, diffusion of innovations, the success of groups and decision making processes. This work is part of a growing community of researchers at Cornell who are using data from large scale computer mediated systems like Wikipedia to study general social processes. Check the ISS main page for a project link
Links to Papers:
Picturing Usenet:
Mapping Computer-Mediated Collective Action
You Are Who You Talk To:
Detecting Roles in Usenet Newsgroups
The Ties that Blog: Examining the Relationship Between
Social Ties and Continued Participation in the Wallop
Weblogging System
Return to Networks Team Members page.
