I think that when we move into the larger Somerville community, the connections may become more concrete (maybe not, but that is my hope). Organizations, even with moderate turnover in staff or leadership will have some kind of institutional memory that many Tufts Student Organizations lack.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Strong Ties + Weak Ties
Reflecting on the "Linked" reading from last week, I am very interested in the importance and difference between strong ties and weak ties. I understand how weak ties can expand a network much faster than strong ties can, as each weak tie is a link to someone with a whole circle of strong ties. However, I think it is important to acknowledge that between the Tufts Student Organizations, this might not be as useful as we hope. In general, a weak tie opens a door to a whole new range of possible connections. With student organizations, ties are not so distinct as strong or weak. "Weak" ties on campus may include connections from the past, connections that were planned and never executed, and perhaps most frequently, connections that fizzled with time and student turnover. I know that we have discussed this in class, but I still find it important to mention.
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I think that the point made about classifying ties between organizations is a significant one, and I think it is one on which we need to reach a decision. Depending on how we define a link between organizations, our map may become infinitely more complicated. Katherine questioned how we should classify those links that are not quite concrete—whether they never materialized or were eliminated with leader turnover, it is useful to know that two organizations could potentially have a relationship. I think we should address this by linking the two organizations to the issue they have in common as opposed to each other. That way, the user would be able to access some kind of visual representation showing that these two groups are very nearly related, while not being misleading in the type of relationship that exists between the groups.
ReplyDeleteMore importantly, however, I would like to have some kind of discussion and reach a decision over how we should classify concrete links (if we are going to). Obviously, we need to specify links that represent current and ongoing collaboration between organizations. In that vein, we should also have a separate category of links for past relationships that are no longer functioning. If possible for these concrete links, it would be useful to be able to provide specific information about that link—maybe the user would be able to select both organizations and a box would get a pop up box detailing the relationship? Also, I think it would be useful to have a classification of links that shows a subsidiary relationship. This would be useful in distinguishing between hubs and vertically organized networks (such as LCS) because they are not one and the same. Obviously, there are many more types of links that we could specify. I think it is important that we quickly resolve this issue, because the map is expanding quickly, and it would be tedious to go back and redefine links (as we discussed with tagging last week).
Commenting on Katherine's post, I think the issue of ties with the Tufts student groups (or Suffolk and BU) is definitely going to be a problem with the map because of the student turnover. However, I think this is why it is important that we get some kind of permanent information like group emails or websites (even though these aren't updated many times). Though, to add to this problem is that even despite having permanent information, the leadership will definitely change and therefore we'll be dealing with getting new people introduced and accustomed to what we're doing with every turnover.
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