[Air-L] Spam and Twitterology

[Alex Halavais]

Social Science is Hard :). The fact that spam runs rampant on Twitter
shouldn't be an indicator that its worth as an object of study is
diminished. Just the opposite, I think. Email is arguably the spamiest
of internet channels, precisely because it garners so much attention
from its users.

If people stop using it, or it does not play an important role as
mediator of social relations, then yes, by all means, abandon.
Otherwise, it calls for some very difficult choices regarding whether
(a) you have to do some form of spam filtering before analyzing the
network and/or (b) what the network analysis actually measures when
some tweets/follows are clearly less meaningful than others...

Best,

Alex


On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 9:27 AM, Barry Wellman <wellman at chass.utoronto.ca> wrote:
> 2 ways in which Spam can affect your Twitterology
>
> 1. Looking at an ego-centered personal community of tweeps when a large
> chunk of them are spammers will affect the size and network structure of
> your findings.
>
> 2. Looking at the geographical spread of tweeps (a whole network analysis),
> when a large chunk of spammers ....
>
> Of course, YMMV
>
>  Barry Wellman
>  _______________________________________________________________________
>
>  S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC               NetLab Director
>  Department of Sociology                  725 Spadina Avenue, Room 388
>  University of Toronto   Toronto Canada M5S 2J4   twitter:barrywellman
>  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman             fax:+1-416-978-3963
>  Updating history:      http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php
>  _______________________________________________________________________
>
> _______________________________________________
> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> http://www.aoir.org/
>



-- 
//
// This email is
// [x] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded.
// [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing.
//
// Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur
// http://alex.halavais.net
//