I thought this was really interesting.
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I thought this was really interesting.

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Blog Post 4/21
When you think about Chicago, one would think that it is a huge city and because of its size the network would be polycentric - this is true! Â Chicago is a big city full of tons of people that make up a dense network.
The phrase "Everyone knows everyone" is something I hear a lot. I would say there is truth to that statement because when a person exposes themselves to clusters that live within components of a network they gain exposure to different subgroups of a network that have no choice but to overlap. Hence, connecting a person of one components to other component. When this happens multiple times eventually "everyone does begin to know everyone". Chicago is so big, yet so small.Â
Also, Depending on where a person lives, the network within their neighborhood could have low transitivity which increases suicide or it could have high transitivity which increases safety but can have an extremity of cult development. Â
Blog Post 4/14
Recently, a family member of mine and their friends in their social circle have been trying to live a heather lifestyle. Â They have started to attend matcha rallies to embrace substituting this green tea powder for coffee as a means of energy, and to be more mindful of what is put into the body. Â The circle effect has been created in their network because my family member knew someone that boasted about the benefits of matcha so they were more likely to try it out as opposed to seeing an advertisement on tv or hearing one on the radio from someone they were unfamiliar with. I have also started to use this powder more frequently than I have in the past. The barrier effect is not present in this network because there are no barriers that are preventing me from getting to know someone because I am invited to all of the rallies.Â
Final Remarks
    There are not that many classes that teach skills that can be applied to oneâs everyday life. I mean, as interesting as Physicist IIIâs âstrong forceâ is, or Differential Equationâs integrating factors are, I havenât been able to apply them in my everyday life. However, much to my surprise, I found myself analyzing my social network with my newly found tool kit that I receive courtesy of COM 383.  I start pondering whether I should decrease my strong ties and increase my weak ties or vice versa. I wonder if a lack of homophily was the reason I didnât join some networks and struggled to join others. I learnt the social similarities between Chicagoâs trouble youth and the victims and perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide. I realize that even though I complained about my Face Book friends, I maintained our connection because I valued my social collateral. I evaluated which social networks where needed for success and which ones wonât allow for it. This course and more like it are precisely what IIT needs. We have some of the worldâs smartest students and this course teaches them how to apply their genius to social settings. This is perhaps, the most important lesson they can learn.
Weekly Blog Post 4/7
When learning about structural holes it made me think of the executive board in an organization.  If the president (node) was taken away the network would become weak because the opinion leader is gone.  Opinion leaders have direct connections.  In some smaller organizations a president or CEO will have their hands in many things and are accessible to multiple people in the company (as opposed to larger companies). This would create a large hole in the networkÂ
The hierarchy network also relates to the hub authority structure because the hub (the president)Â points to the authorities. Authorities are people that look toward hub for advice, the are also content providers.Â

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Blog Post 3/31
As i browsed through my newsfeed on Instagram I noticed that celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Beyonce get tons of likes.  There are people that become famous through Instagram simply because they have money to dress nicely and are attractive.  This becomes the Matthew Effect - those who have more get more, and they tend to have more because their fans give them more. An Instagram star already has a lot of followers, accessories, and clothes.  She receives free clothing from Nike simply because they want her to wear their brand and pose in a picture that will be put on Instagram for all her followers to see.Â
Naturally, all of  celebrities' develop preferential attachment because they want to connect with someone who is more popular than themselves -  sometimes hoping to live vicariously through the Instagram celebrity.Â
The other thing that makes me chuckle is that a "no body" or lesser known person can post a picture on Instagram rocking the same outfit as an "Instagram celebrity" (someone who has no real fame) but because the Instagram celebrity has more social capital they will receive more recognition.Â
Blog Post 4/28
Overall, this class made me look at my relationships differently in life. Â I was able to learn new terms and apply the meaning of them to my daily life.
I realized that after I deactivated my Facebook I had a lot less social capital on the internet than I did when it was activated.  This became pretty evident when I uploaded my recent dance performance on youtube (check it out here) and wanted to promote it on social media.  I had to reactivate my Facebook because I had hundreds of friends that I could reach out to at one time.  Instead of consuming time sending the youtube link to individual people or via email I could post it one time, people would like it, maybe even share it and the youtube views would rack up!Â
Before I deactivated my Facebook I saw myself becoming an outlier in the network because I would rarely ever update my status or post pictures. So, after the video was posted and shared many times, I deactivated my Facebook again.  I found that my network became too dense and I was uncomfortable with it.  I did not care to know anyone's business other than the people that are in my social circle and there was little to no diffusion in the network. I ended up creating another one, just for work and I am pretty content with my decision.  I have left that network behind (my old Facebook) and I have started a new one.
MPurdy - Final Blog Post
Reflecting back on the semester as a whole, it sure has flown by. All in all, I am very glad that I decided to take COM 383 and learn more about what a social network really is, aside from what is currently trending out there due to technological communication and information sharing platforms. There is definitely much more to any network than meets the eye, and many different roles a node may play and actions an edge may carry out. I liked learning about the terminology associated with networks, but the second half of the course really brought it to life with the articles and case studies.
Perhaps one of the more interesting article sets to me was the recent one concerning dark networks. It made me wonder how many networks are in existence today that no one knows about, and how they are able to operate "underground" while advancements in technology and surveillance work to uncover them. How do these dark networks operate, and do they all hold sinister objectives, or are there some dark networks that work to set things straight? After reading and discussing the article on terrorist networks, it now makes sense why seeing the network as a whole would help make a more strategic decision to disrupt or destroy its effectiveness. When little is known about the leadership or whereabouts of key players in a terrorist network, it must be extremely hard to uncover it. This helps explain why visible connections of the network are so crucial to observe, and will slowly lead to more and more network visibility. For my project I am actually looking into a historical "dark" network of sorts, pertaining to gang connections in Chicago during the prohibition era. These networks were able to operate for a lengthy period of time without being busted because of the use of underground tactics, false fronts, and powerful leadership and loyalty ties which kept these gangs together but also stirred up rivalries which ultimately led to their demise.Â
Week of 4/28 Blog Post - John Clark
McDoom, O.S. "Antisocial Capital: A Profile of Rwandan Genocide..."
      The author presents an alternative explanation for the basis behind the sudden violent uprising of the Hutu peoples of Rwanda against their Tutsi neighbors. Previous works have pointed to resource depletion as a potential source of conflict, since Rwanda at the time was the most densely populated African states, at 305 persons/km^2. The prevailing story behind this event begins with the Rwandan independence from Belgium, leading to the decline of the Tutsi-dominated government. In the years following, the Tutsi peoples were exiled, while a Hutu majority came to control the government. After several unsuccessful attempts to reenter Rwanda by the Tutsi, a civil war was ignited, ending with a peace deal in 1993. The following year, Rwanda's Hutu president was assassinated, sparking a 100 day genocide against the Tutsi minority. After the ordeal was over, nearly three quarters of the Tutsi were killed, with an estimated 20% of the Hutu population as willing participants in the mass killing.
    Using egocentric network data acquired by survey of the Tare sector of the Butare prefecture, the author attempts to determine the sociological factors that may have been at play during this event. In particular, the author tests the effect of the size of an individual's network, the network characteristics, and how countervailing ties influence participation in the mass-scale violent behavior. McDoom finds that both the size and network characteristics are important determinants of participation. A large social network can infer that an individual is socially active, meaning that they are more likely to know people who are participants. The network characteristics (i.e. the people who you are connected to) play a large role in the case of socially influential people to an individual, such as family, neighbors, or like-minded people. Following the concept of homophily, individuals will have a higher likelihood of connecting with people that share similar characteristics. In this case, a person with a large social network will have higher density with people who are participants, which will influence the behavior of the individual. What I find interesting about the findings of this study is that nonparticipant behavior does not negatively influence an individual's participation (if participation is seen as positive, not good, but positive). It would appear that this finding goes against my intuition that another person's behavior is influential to an individual's behavior. This is probably because of social dynamics, where people have a tendency to participate in group behavior, especially if the particular behavior reaches critical mass.
Last Post Wooooot!
The concepts that we learned in this class were quite awesome because they could truly be applied to everyday life. We all know that we form connections throughout our lives and we keep some people closer than others. This class helped connect the dots, at least for me. In my mind, I see different groups of people who I am connected to in various ways, for example, people I met in high school, through volunteering, and at the lunch table. Before the class, I saw the groups as  mostly completely separate, but now I see that they can overlap and that overlap, such as someone from the lunch table also volunteering with me, creates opportunities and new paths of communication.
Also, I realized that some lose ties can be extremely important, especially in the context of creating internship or job opportunities for me. For example, a professor that I occasionally email for help with a paper might be the lose tie that leads to me getting a chance to gain experience working as a lab assistant.Â
Overall, many of the concepts that we learned in this class has led me to to become more conscious of my own social networks and how they can intertwine and affect the opportunities afforded to me on my journey through life. :)

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Social Networks=Network Density ...(Just Kidding)
To be completely honest, the one thing that I am definitely taking to the grave with me is the definition of Network Density. It was a term I had never heard before in my life and it seems to be such a well grasped concept now. This applies to almost all the concepts we have learnt in this class. I had not heard of any of these terms but I feel like I can apply a lot of these to daily life from now on.Â
The reason why I found this class interesting was because everything was backed up with examples or diagrams. I understood networks well because I had diagrams and NodeXL plots to look at for reference. The definitions we went over in the beginning of class helped in understanding the concepts we went over later in the course.
The one thing I absolutely love about this class is that more emphasis is paid on us understanding the concept rather than getting into tedious work which might not be of much use. Most of my other classes treat course work as an absolute, getting a desired end result is a 100% necessary. In this class, more stress is laid on the process, the process of how and why things happen and if we are able to showcase that, it means that we have learnt what we were supposed to.Â
Social Networks...Final Thoughts
Social Networks. When I first registered for this class I didnât really know what to expect. This class has been a very interesting experience for me. I learned about many different concepts of social networks. We covered many topics throughout this course but I got to learn a lot about social networks. I learned about network density and its advantages and disadvantages, different types of social networks as well as topics such as homophilly, centrality and multiplexity. I also learned the importance of social network analysis. I never imagined the vast amount of information that becomes available by just mapping someoneâs network.
This course really changed my perspective towards social networks. Before I didnât realize that there were so many aspects of a network. One topic that we discussed in class that really changed my perspective towards social networks was network density, centrality and privacy. I had never considered the precautions of posting on a social media site, or thought about the rate at which information may travel. After learning about social networks I realized that networks provide a great support system and have a lot of things to offer however we must proceed with caution.
The denser a network is the more careful we have to be to not step on our own toes. I hadnât given much thought to how fast information could be spread within a network. Then when we had looked into Professor Hemphillâs Facebook network, I had realized that people are connected to one another in many different ways and you never know who may know the same people that you know. It is an almost scary thought to think about all of the different ways that people can be connected to one another. Looking at the network made me realize how easily information can spread and how dangerous dense networks can be, and how important it is to watch yourself and things you post on social media. Dense networks can provide support and many other benefits but just as easily become a dangerous web if we arenât careful.Â
4/28 Post
This course in Social Networks was much more interesting than I originally expected. I expected most of the class to be researching Facebook and Twitter or other smaller social networks. I enjoyed the first half of class where we learned of all the vocabulary and different types of networks. Going over those helped significantly when we started to get into the articles since the authors used the vocabulary, we learned, to talk about the different networks and describe their studies. The thing that I learned that I think stuck with me for this class is realizing that networking is all around us. It is not just Facebook and Twitter and all of the other social networking sites. We ourselves are networks, we may not see the connections physically but we are all somehow connected in one giant network. Whether you are in a clique, cluster, or you are a loner who happens to only have one friend we are all connected. It is almost scary in a way because this makes everyone much easier to reach out to and find things out about. I've always noticed this especially here in the IIT social network since we are a small school and it is easy to connect with almost everyone with a small number of steps. It is easy enough to prove especially on Facebook. It is just like the Wikipedia game where you can pick anything and within 6 links you can always get to Hitler.
Last Remarks from Steve Burnette
Upon finding this class way back last November or so, I was only interested because I had assumed that we would be looking at the fronts of social networks. Â The actual use of it. Â It sounded interesting because everyone nearly uses them and I myself heavily do. Â Little did I know the vast knowledge I would learn about what social networks can tell us and how networks are so important in society. Â I cannot help but to analyze my surroundings day to day and just think about how they attribute to a much larger network. Â It was a great feeling to be able to tell some people close to me how networks such as Facebook and Twitter or just every day social situations broke down into more "technical" terms. Â For some odd reason, my favorite part of the semester was when we first learned triads. Â It was very interesting to me. Â And then the game when we had to get as many points as possible over a few rounds through negotiation. Â I felt like that really brought out certain qualities in some people whether it be ignorance or intelligence or even pure generosity. Â It was fun all in all and I will never forget the things that I have learned this semester. Â
David Ehrlich-Final Thoughts
On the first day of class, the professor asked everyone why they chose this course. I jokingly answered âBecause I need the credit hours, and whoever decides what courses are available is terrible at their jobâ. Although I was making a joke, there was a grain of truth behind that jest-I was certainly not expecting to be able to apply any of the concepts in this course to anything I expected to encounter in my career as a mechanical engineer. How wrong I was.
From the first day, I noticed that much of the underlying theory seemed to arise from graph theory, a branch of mathematics concerned with the underlying structure of, and interactions within and between, sets of connected objects (i.e., networks). To an engineer like me, these networks would typically consist of, say, power stations and homes, connected by power lines. The social networks we studied in this class arenât fundamentally different.
That last part, that social and power transmission networks arenât fundamentally different, was the most surprising revelation from course to me, and perhaps the most valuable thing I learned. The implication was clear: while individuals may be unpredictable (although Iâm sure psychologists will disagree with me), the behavior of groups-and individuals within groups-is not. In other words, while someone may act randomly alone, put them in the context of their acquaintances and we can get a good prediction of how theyâll behave.

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Weekly Blog 4/48 Final Thoughts...
Overall, I want to dedicate this post to say how glad I am that I took Communications as a minor. My major is Information Technology and Management and so as a requirement we have to minor in something. I decided to take Communications because I figured it would be the easiest to take. I was wrong, for the most part at least. I have learned more in this minor, which consisted of 5 COM classes, have improved my writing skills, and comprehension more than I have in the past 4 years in IIT taking anything else. However, such knowledge was not easily learned, I had to really go back to re-edit a lot of my papers, go back and reread whole readings, actually study for finals. I see now the work that goes into applying communications in real live settings. Whether it be online, in an organization, our workplace, or in school knowing how to communicate effectively in essential. In the case of COM 383, this course was not an exception. The "Understanding Social Networks" book by Kadushin was a very helpful tool in learning the various measures and properties of networks. Now I understand that social networks are not just present online but that we all make part of networks ourselves in our physical world. Knowing that here are different types of networks and that each can have its advantages like disadvantages makes you examine your own network. I used to think that my connections with past friends or people I only see a few times were not important now I know that they are my weak ties and that these connections may deem useful in information transfer or even when looking for a job. The readings demonstrated how extensive networks can be and their role in other social issues. I was specifically impressed and shocked how these social network researches are able to take a community and identify its networks and properties with extensive research of course, but once they put it all together in their papers they make it seem so easy. Me on the other hand did struggle to finish my final project, which I would have I liked to finished but the data was not working in my favor. Yet I knew where I wanted to get at and I would have understood what I would find in the end because of all the readings and examples we were looking at in class. I do not think this was a complicated subject at all to understand but implicates a lot more than just the members/nodes in the networks and the knowledge these networks can impart us go beyond than just knowing our position in space. All in all, I really enjoyed this class and got a lot of out it that I know will be useful to apply in my life to come.  Even if you cannot take this as a major or minor I would highly recommend taking COM classes while at IIT.
Weekly Blog Post 3/31
 This post is late in semester, but I figured I used this last post to state what I learned last Thursday about dark networks. First of all, I knew that you have to be careful in choosing your friends and acquaintances but after seeing how our position in our network in them can screw us over it makes you want to rethink your spot. Of course we might not all be involved in a conspiracy but our networks can still work against us. In some cases we will belong in centralized or decentralized networks and who and how we transmit data to our fellow nodes really matters. For examples, I think that my siblings and I form a centralized network where the oldest one is the one in the middle. I am a node connected to my older sibling but I see how if we ever wanted to get them in trouble all it took was for everyone to point fingers at them and they would get in trouble. Why? because there was no denying it, oh if everyone says so it must be true, or maybe it was just our parents trying to teach them life lessons. In any case, the structure, the topography, and properties of a network really come into play when go back in examine why somethings happen and even more beneficial when we can use them to predict future circumstances and possible prevent negative events.