Conflict dynamics in collaborative knowledge production. A study of network gatekeeping on Wikipedia

Digitalization has fundamentally changed gatekeeping by allowing users to participate in processes of information control. We study gatekeeping on Wikipedia by analyzing networks of deletions among editors. Factors considered to explain the emergence of these networks are editors’ information production capability, their range of activity, their communicative ties, their geographical location, and their past interactions. Relying on relational event models, we find that the observed gatekeeping processes are not only shaped by the factors related to an editor’s standing in the community, but also to a certain extent by their attribution to content-related groups and some forms of past interactions.     

Leadership and contagion by COVID-19 among residence hall students: A social network analysis approach

University students have changed their behaviour due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper, we describe the characteristics of PCR+ and PCR- nodes, analyse the structure, and relate the structure of student leaders to pandemic contagion as determined by PCR+ in 93 residential university students. Leadership comes from the male students of social science degrees who have PCR +, with an eigenvector centrality structure, β-centrality, and who are part of the bow-tie structure. There was a significant difference in β-centrality between leaders and non-leaders and in β-centrality between PCR+ and non-leaders. Leading nodes were part of the bow-tie structure. MR-QAP results show how residence and scientific branch were the most important factors in network formation. Therefore, university leaders should consider influential leaders, as they are vectors for disseminating both positive and negative outcomes.     

Network assessment: Design of a framework and indicators for monitoring and self-assessment of a customized gender equality plan in the Mediterranean Engineering Education context

With more than 28 active members, the Mediterranean Engineering Schools Network (RMEI) is the most active network on gender equality in the Mediterranean area. Supported by the HORIZON2020 TARGET project ‘Taking a Reflexive Approach to Gender Equality for Institutional Transformation’, in conceptualizing gender equality learning and system change, the network took a context-specific approach based on a theory of change and other STEM organizational frameworks, to design a self-assessment framework and indicators, considering the systemic view of SDG5 horizontally connected to all SDGs, national context complexity, and transdisciplinary requirements. 95 simple, practical, user-friendly indicators were designed, fitting in the specificities of the Mediterranean-Engineering context. The analysis showed that the network realized its vision, made the ‘passage’ from theory to praxis on gender equality change, effectively developed meaningful processes/structures, formulated a policy statement, built a community of practice and inspired members. It also achieved trustful relationships and inspired outputs, effective communication, sharing of information and resources, and top management commitment. Critical aspects are a) the analysis in depth of issues linked to the existence of gender-based stereotypes and bias in engineering schools of the Mediterranean that entails tackling gender ideologies considering the whole national social system and existing structures; b) sustainability of gender equality structures created at the member institutions with the support of TARGET project which is depending on the willingness of institution’s leaders to continue/advance with gender-sensitive strategies in their institution.     

A chain game for distributed trading and negotiation

This position paper introduces a simulation gaming environment for enacting a production network. The environment aims to be an integrative laboratory for investigating supply networks, as well as being a versatile training tool. The primary focus is on food production networks. The environment enables a number of teams of participants, each representing one actor in a food chain, to conduct business together. The teams can have the role of auction, co-operation, wholesaler, factory, retail chain, and retail outlet. Producers and consumers are either enacted or simulated. The game leaders freely determine the products and production methods in each run of the game. The gaming environment takes performance, process and institutional aspects of chains into account. It is particularly suited for investigating issues of sustainability and trust. Currently the gaming environment is under development. The paper presents version 1B. This version can be found at http://www.chaingame.org. It runs on the Web, enabling to model distributed chains.     

A machine-learning approach for a sintering process using a neural network

This paper presents a machine-learning approach using a multi-layered neural network (NN) with application to a sintering process in an iron- and steel-making plant. Our method induces 'operational rules' that determine operational conditions to obtain products that meet a given quality specification. In our application, an operational condition decides the appropriate ranges of chemical composition and heat input to obtain sinter with desirable properties. Our approach consists of two stages. First, backpropagation (BP) training is performed to obtain a NN which decides whether a given condition is appropriate or not. Secondly, from the trained NN, we extract rules which explain what operational conditions are appropriate. In spite of the effective learning capability, a major drawback of a NN is 'unreadability' of the learned knowledge, or the lack of an explanatory capability, which is crucial in the second stage. We developed a rule extraction algorithm which contributes to overcoming this 'unreadability'. The extracted rules are found to agree well with the knowledge in material science.     

网络立法浅瞻－－公共秩序原则在网络立法领域应有新发展

互联网已成为目前紧密连接各种机构和个人的手段,其固有的一些特征在很大程度上要求有关互联网的立法强调内容上的共同性,强调促进互联网信息的无国界传递;因而,原来在非互联网领域所适用的公共政策这一国际私法原则在互联网领域的法律地位正面临着新的挑战.     

Social creativity as a function of agent cognition and network properties: A computer model

Inventions – concepts, devices, procedures – are often created by networks of interacting agents in which the agents can be individuals (as in a scientific discipline) or they can themselves be collectives (as in firms interacting in a market). Different collectives create and invent at different rates. It is plausible that the rate of invention is jointly determined by properties of the agents (e.g., their cognitive capacity) and by properties of the network of interactions (e.g., the density of the communication links), but little is known about such two-level interactions. We present an agent-based model of social creativity in which the individual agent captures key features of the human cognitive architecture derived from cognitive psychology, and the interactions are modeled by agents exchanging partial results of their symbolic processing of task information. We investigated the effect of agent and network properties on rates of invention and diffusion in the network via systematic parameter variations. Simulation runs show, among other results, that (a) the simulation exhibits network effects, i.e., the model captures the beneficial effect of collaboration; (b) the density of connections produces diminishing returns in term of the benefits on the invention rate; and (c) limits on the cognitive capacity of the individual agents have the counterintuitive consequence of focusing their efforts. Limitations and relations to other computer simulation models of creative collectives are discussed.     

Statistical power of the social network autocorrelation model

The network autocorrelation model has become an increasingly popular tool for conducting social network analysis. More and more researchers, however, have documented evidence of a systematic negative bias in the estimation of the network effect (ρ). In this paper, we take a different approach to the problem by investigating conditions under which, despite the underestimation bias, a network effect can still be detected by the network autocorrelation model. Using simulations, we find that moderately-sized network effects (e.g., ρ = .3) are still often detectable in modest-sized networks (i.e., 40 or more nodes). Analyses reveal that statistical power is primarily a nonlinear function of network effect size (ρ) and network size (N), although both of these factors can interact with network density and network structure to impair power under certain rare conditions. We conclude by discussing implications of these findings and guidelines for users of the autocorrelation model.     

Efficiency decomposition in network data envelopment analysis with slacks-based measures

Conventional data envelopment analysis (DEA) treats the production system as a black box when measuring efficiency, ignoring its internal structure. By taking the operations of the component processes of the system into consideration, several network DEA models have been developed. Of these, the slacks-based measure (SBM) approach has attracted much attention for its ability to provide suitable efficiency measures, especially for weakly efficient production units. This paper proposes a general SBM model for network systems, and is able to decompose the system efficiency into a weighted average of the process efficiencies. This relationship holds for all types of network structure. An example shows that the network model has stronger discriminating power than the conventional black-box model, and the system efficiency is indeed a weighted average of the process efficiencies. The decomposition of the system efficiency helps identify key factors to improve the performance of a production unit.     

The media of sociology: tight or loose translations?

Sociologists have increasingly come to recognize that the discipline has unduly privileged textual representations, but efforts to incorporate visual and other media are still only in their beginning. This paper develops an analysis of the ways objects of knowledge are translated into other media, in order to understand the visual practices of sociology and to point out unused possibilities. I argue that the discourse on visual sociology, by assuming that photographs are less objective than text, is based on an asymmetric media‐determinism and on a misleading notion of objectivity. Instead, I suggest to analyse media with the concept of translations. I introduce several kinds of translations, most centrally the distinction between tight and loose ones. I show that many sciences, such as biology, focus on tight translations, using a variety of media and manipulating both research objects and representations. Sociology, in contrast, uses both tight and loose translations, but uses the latter only for texts. For visuals, sociology restricts itself to what I call ‘the documentary’: focusing on mechanical recording technologies without manipulating either the object of research or the representation. I conclude by discussing three rare examples of what is largely excluded in sociology: visual loose translations, visual tight translations based on non‐mechanical recording technologies, and visual tight translations based on mechanical recording technologies that include the manipulation of both object and representation.