Fostering Collaboration: Social Media and International Relationships

Sharon Strover, Derek Lackaff, Chris McConnellUniversity of Texas at Austin

Artur Pimenta AlvesINESC, University of Porto

UT Austin | Portugal Program

Portugal crafts agreements with US universities in select domains

2007: UT Austin | Portugal Program in Digital Media begins

Development of joint Ph.D. program, research collaborations, coursework, and internships

International School for Digital Transformation (ISDT)

Discuss the process and prospects of using new technologies to enhance civil society, governance and social inclusion

Week-long residential program augmented with social media tools

77 faculty, students, and activists from 15 countries

Social Media and Social Capital

Ellison et al. (2007): bridging capital Wellman (2001): extending patterns Sessions (2010): f2f stimulates online

communication Goodfellow (2005), Haythornthwaite

(2000): mediation challenges Laat et al. (2007): mandates and incentives

for interaction Wagner & Leydesdorff (2005):”supernodes”

and authorship networks

Research Questions

1. Does participating in an international, intensive, residential intervention aimed at cultivating peer-to-peer relationships yield a social network characterized by enduring and increased numbers of connections?

2. What types of research-related relationships are produced by the intervention?

3. What is the role of social media in creating and maintaining research relationships?

Research Implementation

Online survey Network metrics: relationship

matrix› Activities and types

Social media metrics 51/77 respondents

Prior foru

m use

email blogs twitter sns foru

ms imin

degree

out degree

betweenness

centrality

status .05 -.16 -.04 -.04 .25 .00 .12 .33** .18 .17

prior forum use - .16 -.15 -.05 -.08 -.03 .01 .29** -.09 -.16

email - .09 .07 .09 -.05 .18 -.11 .17 .23

blogs - .52*** .05 .45*** .43*** -.14 -.13 -.02

twitter - .38** .37** .40*** .00 -.04 .10

sns - -.07 .23 -.01 .22 .38**

forums - .27 .17 .05 .07

im - -.10 -.08 .04

Model R2 F(3, 47) Variable B(SE) BetaEmail .16 3.72* Gender 77.92 (33.49) .31*

Status 43.27 (26.03) .22Email use 37.01 (15.22) .33*

Blogs .05 1.60 Gender 64.28 (35.64) .26Status 33.31 (27.24) .17Blog use 4.72 (14.05) .05

Twitter .07 1.95 Gender 66.51 (34.74) .27Status 34.09 (26.96) .17Twitter use 12.07 (11.62) .14

Social Network Site

.18 4.29** Gender 62.79 (32.34) .25Status 15.28 (26.12) .08SNS use 34.68 (12.68) .36**

Web Forums .05 1.60 Gender 60.44 (34.95) .24Status 32.98 (27.22) .17Forum use 5.39 (15.61) .05

Instant Message .05 1.60 Gender 63.18 (35.03) .25Status 31.73 (27.43) .16IM use 5.54 (15.63) .05

Conclusions

Participants were positioned to benefit – and did see increase in social capital

Both active and passive media contribute to social capital outcomes

ISDT appears to have positive impact on research

Limitations in design – unable to evaluate unique contributions of face-to-face and social media platforms

Fostering Collaboration: Social Media and International Relationships

Sharon Strover, Derek Lackaff, Chris McConnellUniversity of Texas at Austin

Artur Pimenta AlvesINESC, University of Porto