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Material on the web is ‘diverse’ in other respects too. Because access is egalitarian (with the exception of the remaining biases mentioned earlier), web content is not subject to the ordering and standardizing influence of institutions and the professionals active within them. If you go to a traditional library, by contrast, you enter a space to which information has been admitted only after
undergoing a set of complex vetting procedures, involving authorities such as publishing houses, editors, librarians and academics (see Ryder and Wilson, 1996). By comparison, web space is open, unstructured, and quintessentially anarchic. The scholarly sits side-by-side with the journalistic, the institutional with the personal, the factual with the fictitious. Geographical origin, authorship and communicative intent (and thus genre) are notoriously difficult to establish:
We all know (and may ourselves have voiced) the complaints about online information: there is too much ephemeral content of dubious reliability: journalistic, commercial and personal texts of unknown authorship and authority abound; assertions are intermingled with and represented as established fact, and details of sources and research methodology are documented haphazardly at best. (Fletcher, 2001: 10)
This lack of pre-ordering, and the indiscriminate mixing of voices and genres, probably goes quite a long way towards explaining why critical discourse analysts are often reluctant to mine the web for data. In the absence of gatekeepers, who structure and vet content in the traditional media, the onus falls on the researcher to establish the nature of the data that search engines have laid before him or her, and to select those sources that will be useful in answering specific research questions.
undergoing a set of complex vetting procedures, involving authorities such as publishing houses, editors, librarians and academics (see Ryder and Wilson, 1996). By comparison, web space is open, unstructured, and quintessentially anarchic. The scholarly sits side-by-side with the journalistic, the institutional with the personal, the factual with the fictitious. Geographical origin, authorship and communicative intent (and thus genre) are notoriously difficult to establish:
We all know (and may ourselves have voiced) the complaints about online information: there is too much ephemeral content of dubious reliability: journalistic, commercial and personal texts of unknown authorship and authority abound; assertions are intermingled with and represented as established fact, and details of sources and research methodology are documented haphazardly at best. (Fletcher, 2001: 10)
This lack of pre-ordering, and the indiscriminate mixing of voices and genres, probably goes quite a long way towards explaining why critical discourse analysts are often reluctant to mine the web for data. In the absence of gatekeepers, who structure and vet content in the traditional media, the onus falls on the researcher to establish the nature of the data that search engines have laid before him or her, and to select those sources that will be useful in answering specific research questions.
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Social network analysis (SNA) is not a formal theory in sociology but rather a strategy for investigating social structures. As it is an idea that can be applied in many fields, we study, in particular, its influence in the information sciences. Information scientists study publication, citation and co-citation networks, collaboration structures and other forms of social interaction networks. Moreover, the Internet represents a social network of an unprecedented scale. In all these studies social network analysis can successfully be applied.
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Central to ANT is the concept of translation which is some times referred to as Sociology of Translation, in which innovators attempt to create a forum, a central network in which all the actors agree that the network is worth building and defending. In his widely debated 1986 study of how marine biologists try to restock the St Brieuc Bay in order to produce more scallops,[4] Michel Callon has defined 4 moments of translation. These four moments are derived from studying:
1. Problematisation What is the problem that needs to be solved? Who are the relevant actors? Delegates need to be identified that will represent groups of actors. So, a union head represents workers or a Member of Parliament represents his constituency. During problematisation, the primary actor tries to establish itself as an obligatory passage point (OPP) between the other actors and the network, so that it becomes indispensable.
2. Interessement
Getting the actors interested and negotiating the terms of their involvement. The primary actor works to convince the other actors that the roles it has defined them are acceptable.
3. Enrollment
Actors accept the roles that have been defined for them during interessement.
4. Mobilization of allies
Do the delegate actors in the network adequately represent the masses? If so, enrollment becomes active support.
1. Problematisation What is the problem that needs to be solved? Who are the relevant actors? Delegates need to be identified that will represent groups of actors. So, a union head represents workers or a Member of Parliament represents his constituency. During problematisation, the primary actor tries to establish itself as an obligatory passage point (OPP) between the other actors and the network, so that it becomes indispensable.
2. Interessement
Getting the actors interested and negotiating the terms of their involvement. The primary actor works to convince the other actors that the roles it has defined them are acceptable.
3. Enrollment
Actors accept the roles that have been defined for them during interessement.
4. Mobilization of allies
Do the delegate actors in the network adequately represent the masses? If so, enrollment becomes active support.
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El análisis de redes sociales, entendido al modo estructuralista, estático, nos servirá pues para aproximar el funcionamiento y la estructura real de instituciones o grupos muy consolidados y estables, pero no cambios, transformaciones sociales donde los propios hechos, la voluntad individual de los actores acabe generando cambios en la misma estructura de la red.
Paradójicamente, los viejos estructuralistas, confrontados a la red, no podrán explicar el cambio social que tanto les preocupó siempre.
Como remarcaba Watts en la cita anterior, los defensores del análisis estático “en vez de entender las redes como meros conductos a través de los cuales la influencia se propaga según sus propias reglas, han tratado a las propias redes como una representación directa de la influencia”. Podríamos definir “influencia” como la probabilidad asociada a un nodo de transmitir o impedir la transmisión de nuevas ideas o pautas de comportamiento en la red. En este marco, la instantánea de la red en un momento dado sólo puede referir una información parcial y a menudo confundirnos sobre las tendencias y los flujos que más pueden interesarnos en el análisis: la propagación (de info en la red) y la transformación (de los vínculos que le dan forma).
Paradójicamente, los viejos estructuralistas, confrontados a la red, no podrán explicar el cambio social que tanto les preocupó siempre.
Como remarcaba Watts en la cita anterior, los defensores del análisis estático “en vez de entender las redes como meros conductos a través de los cuales la influencia se propaga según sus propias reglas, han tratado a las propias redes como una representación directa de la influencia”. Podríamos definir “influencia” como la probabilidad asociada a un nodo de transmitir o impedir la transmisión de nuevas ideas o pautas de comportamiento en la red. En este marco, la instantánea de la red en un momento dado sólo puede referir una información parcial y a menudo confundirnos sobre las tendencias y los flujos que más pueden interesarnos en el análisis: la propagación (de info en la red) y la transformación (de los vínculos que le dan forma).
