Internet-based Social Networking

I am in the process of putting together a new course titled, Internet-based Social Networking…

I am very excited about this course, but it is always daunting teaching a course for the first time. To further fuel the anxiety is that the course has never been offered before, so everything, including what textbooks to introduce, will be new.

After an exhaustive search, I found the following book, which will serve as my main text. It was really a no-brainer and it’s titled, Understanding Social Networks: Theories, Concepts and Findings, by Charles Kadushin. The book seems very promising with mostly positive reviews. And it seems to offer a great starting point beginning from the origins of network theory to more complex concepts such as social network analysis.

I am also excited about implementing a new version of SocialXYZ. I’m hoping that an interdisciplinary course on social networks will yield some interesting data. I am particularly interesting in integrating micro-blogging and macro-blogging again. I initially experimented with the idea back in 2012 in a paper titled, Integrating Blogging and Microblogging to Foster Learning and Social Interaction in Online Learning Communities, and received mixed results. I am hoping during this iteration, I can more seamlessly integrate the Twitter component with the blogging engine contained within SocialXYZ. I remain optimistic that the two technologies can be integrated on some level.