Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
To facilitate management of a study, including the development of data collec-
tion instruments, there are applications such as Network Genie (secure.network
genie.com). As this type of research continues to grow, many more applications
will emerge to support research efforts.
To be clear, social network analysis is not new, though we suspect few are
familiar with it. As an analytical practice, at one time its needs exceeded the
technology available. Today the technology has caught up with the need, and
social network analysis is becoming more prevalent among social scientists and
organizational studies professionals. There are many sources of information on
the internet for software information such as the site for the International
Network for Social Network Analysis (www.insna.org/ INSNA/soft_inf.html).
Commonly used applications include UCINET, Krackplot, Multinet, NEGOPY,
Gradap, FatCat, InFlow and Linkalign. Not all applications are the same, how-
ever. Some, such as InFlow, are designed for business use. Others are totally
unrelated to “social” networks, and apply more to bioinformatics or computer
network analysis. A general rule of thumb for researching network analysis and
the various tools available is to read through some specifies about a given appli-
cation and take a quick look at a data/analysis sample. The
Handbook of Online
Research Methods
(Blank, Fielding & Lee, 2008) is a good source of general
information. In addition, we encourage researchers to peruse the journal
Connections
(www. insna.org/indexConnect.html).
Observing behavior and virtual
worlds
A type of research practiced on the internet is known as participant observa-
tion. There are many environments where this type of research is possible.
The most basic type of observation can be performed in any number of com-
municative environments such as on a listserv discussion list or a chat room.
Game rooms (e.g. http://www. mpogd.com/), where people interact in the
context of some kind of gaming activity, are also fairly easy to access and can
provide substantive observational data. There are also other kinds of interac-
tive environments that lend themselves to participant observation such as
Second Life (http://secondlife.com/), an online society within a 3D world,
where users can explore, build, socialize and participate in their own economy
(pacec-sped.org/pf6007.htm, accessed on 8 March 2007). Just about any place
on the internet where individuals interact provides an environment for
observing behavior.
Online virtual environments range from very simple text-based environments
that originated over modem-based bulletin board systems, to some of the current
virtual worlds that rely on 3-dimensional graphical representation and have much
in common with computer video games. The basic systems are called MUDs
