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owen | 2021-04-21 09:49:52 UTC | #1

Masters of Networks 5: networks of meaning.

A hackathon on semantic data to explore collective intelligence.

RegisterContact us

About

Why

Society is a network. Societal change arises from the fabric of interpersonal relationships. People turn to each other to share vision, build or borrow technological tools, mobilize. They seek advice, help and moral support from each other. They exchange knowledge and share resources. They meet, interact, and work together. All societal change happens in social networks.

00:00
-02:23

This ceaseless exchange is collective intelligence at work . The resulting networks of associations are its signature. We can use network analysis to understand this process, and perhaps find ways to improve upon it. Are you a social scientist, a policy maker, a civil society activist reflecting on a social process? Then thinking in networks might be a great way to generate fresh, relevant questions, and seek out their answers.

Human relationships between agents involved in societal change develop through dialogue. We can access it, and take part, through means like online fora, scientific articles, news. And dialogue, in turn, with every step creates associations between concepts and ideas. As it develops, it gives rise to networks of a different type. Their nodes represent entities that surface in the dialogue, like concepts, ideas, social agents. We call these semantic networks , networks of meaning.

What

We come together to find out how to use semantic networks to learn about societal change in the groups that generated them.

Semantic networks tell us how the different concepts connect to each other. Are there surprises? Do apparently unrelated concepts tend to come up in the same exchanges? Does this encode some kind of tension, some change in the making?

The fascinating part is this: by looking at the network, we can extract information that no individual in the network has. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Collective intelligence!

But how do you encode human dialogue in a network? How do you extract meaning from it? Does the structure of a semantic network contain some kind of "big picture" for the issue discussed in the dialogue that generated it?

How

We look at semantic datasets and build them into networks. We use open source software for network analysis. We then visualize and interrogate the network to see what we can learn. Our final aim is to prototype methodologies for extracting collective intelligent outcomes from human conversation.

We optimize for interdisciplinarity. We draw participants from at least two very different domains: network/data science and antropology/ethnography. But any expertise, academic or not, is very welcome, from engineering to history and art. Diversity trumps ability: the advantages of interdisciplinary collaboration outweigh the extra effort to communicate across our respective languages.

Who should come

Masters of Networks 5 is open to all, and especially friendly to beginners . Scholars of any discipline, hackers, policy makers, civil society activists, and so on all have something to contribute. In the end we are all experts here. We all are part of pushing for, and against, societal change, and all humans are expert conversationalists. There’s an extra bonus for beginners: networks are easy to visualize. And when you visualize them, as we will, they are often beautiful and intuitive.

Particularly welcome are people with an interest in the future development of Internet technology. Our data are especially juicy in that domain.

Agenda

Masters of Networks 5 consists of three sessions in three consecutive days:

Day 1: 28th of April: Kickoff

  • 10:00-11:00 CET: meet everyone, an overview of the challenges and the datasets available (central room)
  • Rest of the day: Work on your challenge, in group rooms or offline.

    • Day 2: 29th of April: Hack

  • 10:00-12:30 CET: optional check-in (central room)
  • Rest of the day: Work on your challenge, in group rooms or offline.

    • Day 3: 30th of April: Final Presentation

  • In the morning: Work on your challenge, in group rooms or offline.
  • In the afternoon: present and discuss your works (central room)
  • In the evening: social hanging out and networking (central room)

    • Challenges

    Visualization challenge

    Create informative and beautiful visualizations starting from our data. Skills needed: domain expertise relative to the dataset(s) chosen, design, dataviz, netviz. Coordinator: Guy @melancon

  • ​Its not only about creativity and beauty, it's about interactivity -- a map seen as a malleable object so you can squirk information out of it.
  • It's also about being able to specify graphical design from the tasks you'd need to conduct on the data and its representation on the screen.
  • How is a node-link view useful? How would you intuitively like to manipulate, filter or change it at will when exploring it?
  • Would you feel you need to synchronize the view with a bar chart on some statistics? A scatterplot to figure out if things correlate?

    • Interpretation challenge

    Interpretation challenge

  • Interpretation is at the core of the process. You play with data, you map it, and iteratively build hypothesis. In the end, you dream you would have provable claims.
  • Semantic networks tend to be too large and dense to make sense of visually. Can we think of simple criteria to filter the data for the highest-quality content only (eg: only posts with a minimum number of comments, or of minimum length)? Does the filtering change the results? note: this question used to have its own challenge, now we are merging that into the interpretation one.

  • Interpretation is at the core of the process. You play with data, you map it, and iteratively build hypothesis. In the end, you dream you would have provable claims.
  • Semantic networks tend to be too large and dense to make sense of visually. Can we think of simple criteria to filter the data for the highest-quality content only (eg: only posts with a minimum number of comments, or of minimum length)? Does the filtering change the results? note: this question used to have its own challenge, now we are merging that into the interpretation one.

  • POPREBEL is a research project on the populist insurgence in Eastern Europe. Its principal investigator @Jan has proposed a challenge around making the most out of their own dataset.

    • Text mining challenge

    Network analysis is cool, but you may have other methods in your toolbox: sentiment analysis, topic modelling or maybe word2vec? How about the narratives in traditional news media? Can we compare the reporting of news outlets on tech challenges to the discussions of hackers? Let's experiment with different tools, text data and find answers to exciting social tech dilemmas!

    Skills needed: Python and enthusiasm! Coordination: @kristof_gyodi, @mpalinski

    And more. But we insist that every group has a coordinator, who takes responsibility for driving it, sharing the relevant material (examples: software libraries, notes for participants, pseudo code…). If we only have two coordinators, we’ll only have two groups. If you think you can lead a group, get in touch with us!

    Data

    We offer six datasets. Three of them come from ethnographic research: the other three come from text mining research.

    Ethnographic datasets

    Each of these datasets consists of a corpus of coded posts from online conversations. They are identical in structure, though different in that they come from different research projects and investigate different problems.

  • The NGI Exchange ethnographic dataset (download page). NGI Exchange is an online forum, where hundreds of people exchange views on the next generation Internet.
  • The POPREBEL ethnographic dataset (download page). The POPREBEL project explores the phenomenon of populism in Europe. This is a multilingual dataset.
  • The OPENCARE ethnographic dataset (download page). The OPENCARE project explores what happens when health and social care is administered not by the state, nor by the private sector, but by communities.

    • Text mining datasets

  • A Collection of tech media articles (download page TBA). 247k tokenized articles published between 2016 and 2020.
  • A Keyword frequencies in popular tech media (download page). Dataset including i) frequency of appearances for all unigrams and bigrams in the texts; ii) average monthly change in the terms' frequencies calculated by OLS regressions.
  • The Co-occurrences of trending keywords in popular tech media (download page). Dataset for exploring the relationship between topics.

    • Info and registration

    The hackathon takes place online via Zoom. Each challenge will be assigned its own room.

    To register, please go here and fill the form. We will send you the Zoom link one week in advance, with a reminder on the same day.

    --

    MariaEuler | 2021-03-16 09:38:25 UTC | #2

    ping me onces the challenges and agenda are fixed here so it can be moved into public subcathegory can be set up and tell.form made.

    --

    alberto | 2021-03-16 09:38:25 UTC | #3

    ping @kristof_gyodi and @Michal. The draft text for Masters of Networks is now ready at the beginning of this topic. Please review and edit (it's a wiki) as appropriate. In particular, I would suggest you propose a challenge (section "Agenda and challenges", that one of you (or both) would be the leader of.

    @katjab, @LouisSH maybe NESTA wants to lead a challenge too? Katja, as a data scientist with strong policy interests, can you think of a direction that would yield policy-relevant insights?

    @MariaEuler I have re-exported the data, uploaded them onto Zenodo and added a section about the data in the post. If you are worried about the length, we could simply move that part in a different post.

    What is missing is for Michal and Kristof (and maybe Katja) to add their data and challenge; and for Maria to add the practical info.

    --

    kristof_gyodi | 2021-03-16 09:38:25 UTC | #4

    Looks like a cool event 😃 I included a challenge that may be a good fit

    --

    alberto | 2021-03-16 09:38:25 UTC | #5

    Thanks @kristof_gyodi. One more thing: could you also add a line about your dataset(s)? We have found having data is attractive to some of the participants. Look for your @mention within the draft post.

    --

    MariaEuler | 2021-03-16 09:38:25 UTC | #6

    what is the right term to call this when announcing?

    Is it a Workshop? A Hackathon? A Conference?

    On the facilitation:

    Can this be confirmed:

  • 3 days 28th-30th April
  • Wednesday Kickoff event (3 h online synchronous in the morning to set things up ( Starting 10:00-12:30) + break out rooms stay open throughout the 3 days with suggested working hours )
  • Friday Final presentation ( 3h online synchronous for a final presentation in the afternoon + open end)
  • Small groups break out sessions

    • Set up on the platfrom:

  • Subcategory (see overweb challenge: https://edgeryders.eu/c/ioh/The-Overweb-Challenge/337)
  • Tell.form to introduce yourself and your question? (See Connect! - Introduce yourself and your project). Alberto writes text and introductions, Maria sets up subcategory and tell form.

    • Gather?

  • Use https://gather.town/app/Hb6OqcTlc4zMgu4b/LaBRI ? How did the use of Gather go for the Babel crowed? Is it good or not? If not, what should we use instead? Zoom?

    • --

    alberto | 2021-03-16 09:38:25 UTC | #7

    [quote="MariaEuler, post:6, topic:15608"]what is the right term to call this when announcing?[/quote]

    This is a hackathon.

    [quote="MariaEuler, post:6, topic:15608"]Can this be confirmed:

  • 3 days 28th-30th April
  • Wednesday Kickoff event (3 h online synchronous in the morning to set things up ( Starting 10:00-12:30) + break out rooms stay open throughout the 3 days with suggested working hours )
  • Friday Final presentation ( 3h online synchronous for a final presentation in the afternoon + open end)
  • Small groups break out sessions[/quote]

    • Yes. Note that breakouts are by challenge, and each challenge has one person leading it.

    [quote="MariaEuler, post:6, topic:15608"]Set up on the platfrom:

  • Subcategory (see overweb challenge: https://edgeryders.eu/c/ioh/The-Overweb-Challenge/337)[/quote]

    • A subcat seems overkill. We are not trying to have a lot of posts on the platform, but to get people to work on the data.

    [quote="MariaEuler, post:6, topic:15608"]

  • Tell.form to introduce yourself and your question? (See Connect! - Introduce yourself and your project). Alberto writes text and introductions, Maria sets up subcategory and tell form.[/quote]

    • We can include questions, but they are not central unless people want to propose a challenge. I was thinking to use the tell form for people to

    If someone wants to propose a challenge, we can create a field on tell.edgeryders, but it will mostly be empty. Maybe it is simpler to tell people to email us if they want to lead a challenge, and we will have a one-on-one.

    [quote="MariaEuler, post:6, topic:15608"]Gather?

  • Use https://gather.town/app/Hb6OqcTlc4zMgu4b/LaBRI ? How did the use of Gather go for the Babel crowed? Is it good or not? If not, what should we use instead? Zoom?[/quote]

    • Yes, this is important. It is the last part of the post that is still not finished. cc @hugi.

    @MariaEuler, @nadia, should we make a minisite or not?

    --

    MariaEuler | 2021-03-16 09:38:25 UTC | #8

    [quote="alberto, post:7, topic:15608"]We can include questions, but they are not central unless people want to propose a challenge. I was thinking to use the tell form for people to

    do we also use the tell.form for registration to the event?

    --

    alberto | 2021-03-16 09:38:26 UTC | #9

    [quote="MariaEuler, post:8, topic:15608"]do we also use the tell.form for registration to the event?[/quote]

    Yes, what else would we use it for? By filling the form, people register. Upon registration, they say a few things about their background. This is so we can monitor, and improve, diversity of participation.

    --

    hugi | 2021-03-16 09:38:26 UTC | #10

    [quote="alberto, post:7, topic:15608"]Yes, this is important. It is the last part of the post that is still not finished. cc @hugi.[/quote]

    @amelia and I tested it with 8 people yesterday and we both like it and think it will work well. I don’t think we need to say much about it at this point, more than that there will be a “shared virtual space that stays open throughout the hackathon”.

    --

    alberto | 2021-03-16 09:38:26 UTC | #11

    @MariaEuler we still need a link to the Gather meeting point, and we are good to go.

    --

    MariaEuler | 2021-03-16 09:38:26 UTC | #12

    MariaEuler | 2021-03-16 09:38:26 UTC | #12

    --

    MariaEuler | 2021-03-16 09:38:26 UTC | #13

    @alberto, please check out this sign up form. The posts it generates look like the one above https://tell.edgeryders.eu/15575

    --

    alberto | 2021-03-16 09:38:26 UTC | #14

  • I would put the consent stuff at the end.
  • "I want to join the Masters of Networks 5 Hackathon between the 28th and 30th of April" is unclear. One expects to have to answer, "yes/no", but that is kind of ridiculous, because people are there to register. So, I would just get rid of the text.
  • Get rid of the "I want to add" field. You already have "I want to propose another challenge".
  • "hackathon" is not capitalized. "A hackathon", "24 hackathons", like "a dog", "three bottles".
  • Shorten the help text of the remaining free form question, like this: "About you: what is your background? What are your skills (eg. social sciences research, data science, programming...)?
  • To "I want to propose another challenge" add some text to explain "we will contact you".

    • Also (but nothing you can do about this, we need to talk to Owen): "I am new/I already have an account", OK, but an account for what? Imagine coming to the form from Twitter: you maybe do not even know that Edgeryders exists. Some people who do have Edgeryders accounts (like Rob) even clicked on "I'm new". We don't try and solve this now, but it is a design problem. For this, cc @nadia.

    Also: I think it is worth it to do a minisite live.edgeryders.eu with MoN. Let's discuss this today or tomorrow.

    --

    MariaEuler | 2021-03-16 09:38:26 UTC | #15

    MariaEuler | 2021-03-16 09:38:26 UTC | #15

    --

    MariaEuler | 2021-03-16 09:38:26 UTC | #16

    [quote="alberto, post:14, topic:15608"]

  • I would put the consent stuff at the end.[/quote]

    • that is hardcoded and can not be changed

    [quote="alberto, post:14, topic:15608"]

  • “I want to join the Masters of Networks 5 Hackathon between the 28th and 30th of April” is unclear. One expects to have to answer, “yes/no”, but that is kind of ridiculous, because people are there to register. So, I would just get rid of the text.
  • Get rid of the “I want to add” field. You already have “I want to propose another challenge”.
  • “hackathon” is not capitalized. “A hackathon”, “24 hackathons”, like “a dog”, “three bottles”.
  • Shorten the help text of the remaining free form question, like this: "About you: what is your background? What are your skills (eg. social sciences research, data science, programming…)?
  • To “I want to propose another challenge” add some text to explain “we will contact you”.[/quote]updated:https://tell.edgeryders.eu/15575

    • --

    MariaEuler | 2021-03-16 09:38:26 UTC | #19

    Moved some posts from this announcement post here to clean it up before moving it to the public forum:

    https://edgeryders.eu/t/masters-of-networks-5-a-networks-of-meaning-draft-announcement/15572

    --

    amelia | 2021-03-16 09:38:26 UTC | #23

    @hugi want to co-coordinate with me?

    --

    hugi | 2021-03-16 09:38:26 UTC | #24

    Yup, can do!

    --

    MariaEuler | 2021-03-16 16:03:08 UTC | #26

    minisite:https://edgeryders-start.netlify.app/project/research/15608

    --

    MariaEuler | 2021-03-22 18:27:34 UTC | #29

    Logos:

    --

    MariaEuler | 2021-03-24 16:17:37 UTC | #30

    @bojanbobic, as mentioned in our previous conversation I would like to ask you to take over the reminder emails with the links for Gather for the Master of network events as I will be on leave at that point.

    I will also set up calendar reminders for you for this.

    What needs to be done:

    On the 21st of April (1 week before the event) and on the 28th of April 9:00 CET (1h before the event) please sent a link with a reminder for the Hackathon, the Agenda (as can be found in the top post here) and a link to the Gather room (Guy Melançon will set up the gatheroom on their university account. Needs coordination!) to everyone who has signed up.

    Poeple sign up via the tell form, or direct comment on the event thread, therefore you get the email by going here:https://edgeryders.eu/g/moderators/reports/30

    and inputting the id of the event thread: https://edgeryders.eu/t/masters-of-networks-5-a-networks-of-meaning-hackathon/15572 (which is the last number in the link: 15572)

    Any questions regarding this?

    Thank you very much!

    --

    MariaEuler | 2021-03-24 16:21:30 UTC | #31

    @melancon, we are under the impression that you will set up the Gather room.

    Let's coordinate on this:

    Can you send us the link by the 20th of April, so we can include it in the reminder emails for the participants from that point?

    Thank you very much!

    --

    melancon | 2021-04-10 15:30:58 UTC | #32

    Hi @MariaEuler,sorry for replying so late. I believe you were under the impression that my institute has a gather.town license, which is not the case ... The free version has a number of limitations. I am unsure how much we want to use all the goodies the paid version offers (being able to set up an "environment" with various offices, etc.). The free version can accommodate up to 25 users. Would that be sufficient? How many participant are you expecting?

    --

    MariaEuler | 2021-04-10 16:07:39 UTC | #33

    That is quite possibly sufficiant. How.many people are joining from your team?People signing up otherwise we can count here in the thread.

    Probably mainly depends on how many students DLab will bring.

    --

    MariaEuler | 2021-04-12 09:10:05 UTC | #34

    @kristof_gyodi, @mpalinski how many of you/your students will join the Master of Networks?

    --

    kristof_gyodi | 2021-04-12 13:03:34 UTC | #35

    We have asked them to sign up in the next days - we will know the exact numbers next Monday. The group is around 15 students, difficult to tell how many will sign up.

    Is there already a satisfactory number of participants? We can give a push via our channels to reach more students if helpful

    --

    MariaEuler | 2021-04-12 14:21:42 UTC | #36

    [quote="kristof_gyodi, post:35, topic:15608"]Is there already a satisfactory number of participants? We can give a push via our channels to reach more students if helpful[/quote]

    this would be a question for @alberto maybe?

    --

    MariaEuler | 2021-04-12 14:23:08 UTC | #37

    @melancon, depending on how many students join the unpaid version might not be sufficiant.

    --

    alberto | 2021-04-12 14:27:23 UTC | #38

    [quote="kristof_gyodi, post:35, topic:15608, full:true"]We have asked them to sign up in the next days - we will know the exact numbers next Monday. The group is around 15 students, difficult to tell how many will sign up.

    Is there already a satisfactory number of participants? We can give a push via our channels to reach more students if helpful[/quote]

    @kristof_gyodi it's not so much about numbers, but about quality of participation. The goal is not to have great outreach numbers, but to have good projects come out of it. I would give it a push explaining clearly what this is, and in what it differs from other datasci events. It is what I am doing on Twitter.

    Another thing I would do is think about specific people that you think would give a nice contribution, and then contact them one-on-one. This might be worth the effort!

    https://twitter.com/alberto_cottica/status/1381544140656218118

    --

    alberto | 2021-04-12 14:28:46 UTC | #39

    [quote="MariaEuler, post:37, topic:15608, full:true"]@melancon, depending on how many students join the unpaid version might not be sufficiant.[/quote]

    We default to Zoom. I already changed the text in the website. @johncoate is aware of this, as is @melancon. :slight_smile:

    --

    MariaEuler | 2021-04-12 14:32:24 UTC | #40

    Great! @johncoate and @bojanbobic, con you coordinate on how and when to inform the participants and send out those links?

    --

    johncoate | 2021-04-12 17:15:49 UTC | #41

    Yes. I have studied the process and can handle it, as I am sure can Bojan.

    --

    MariaEuler | 2021-04-12 21:50:04 UTC | #42

    Of course! More because the times are so inconvienient for your timezone 😃

    --

    bojanbobic | 2021-04-13 11:55:31 UTC | #43

    No worries, I will coordinate with @johncoate to make it smoothly

    --

    bojanbobic | 2021-04-21 14:27:42 UTC | #44

    @alberto @johncoate @melancon Do we already have a Zoom link for this event? Or should we make one?

    --

    johncoate | 2021-04-21 14:49:23 UTC | #45

    as far as I know we need to make one...but I am not completely sure.

    --

    bojanbobic | 2021-04-22 13:15:57 UTC | #46

    Ok, I scheduled the call via Edgeryders Community account and set Personal Meeting ID so the link, Meeting ID and Passcode stay the same all the time for all 3 days:

    Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5524001719?pwd=YjNhVGVrOFpmLzlQUXkvR3h6a3prZz09

    Meeting ID and passcode are in the calendar. Somebody will need to log in with Edgeryders Community account to start the meeting.

    --

    johncoate | 2021-04-27 17:52:31 UTC | #47

    I logged in to that account and see it on the meeting list. Should be good to go. Or very nearly.I'll stay logged in to that account and create co-host for alberto...anyone else?I will start the meeting maybe 30 minutes early so we can deal with changes and other details.

    All subject to discussion of course...

    --

    bojanbobic | 2021-04-28 07:03:13 UTC | #48

    Bill Johnston and Katerina Bohle Carbonell sent emails that they cannot attend

    --

    johncoate | 2021-04-28 07:13:19 UTC | #49

    Too bad. I started the meeting and set up the breakout rooms. Early, but want to be prepared.

    --

    bojanbobic | 2021-04-28 07:20:49 UTC | #50

    Still 10+ registered since last week (some of them Edgeryders). In total we have 34 registrations (36 - 2 cancelled). I think it is very good

    --

    johncoate | 2021-04-28 07:22:25 UTC | #51

    Agree. I was hoping Bill would participate partly because he is a hub for a lot of online community activity, which can be good for ER. Next time maybe..

    --

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