re:publica is “Germany’s largest and most prominent conference on the future of our society and all things digital”. This year’s theme is action and will focus on how digital technologies bring people together to affect social and political change.
This is a report on the experiment that Nodus Labs conducted on some of the more active Russian protest Facebook groups formed after the rigged Russian election in 2011. We made two network visualizations for three different protest groups over a period of one month in order to observe their dynamics. We found that the most influential members of these groups were not too politically engaged before the elections and were mainly journalists, students, event organizers, and media workers. We also found that the groups formed around ideological causes (such as “Putin must leave”) stagnated in their development in January 2012, while the groups formed around a call for active participatory actions (“Volunteers for the fair elections”) have grown in size and density considerably, building a very well connected and yet open network that was able to bring many new members together around their cause.
In this post we demonstrate how one can detect and analyze the most influential communities and hubs in any Facebook network using Gephi and netvizz applications. We also show how network analysis can be used to identify the strong and weak sides of the network, predicting its possible future development and showing the strategies that could lead to its more sustainable development. We use the real Facebook groups created to support the protest against rigged elections in Russia in December 2011.
In order to maintain a certain degree of openness and flexibility that would extend beyond the short-term goals, professional networks must practise “inclusive exclusivity” – that is, maintain tightly-knit clusters but only temporarily, allowing for the new individuals and communities to enter from the periphery towards the center of the network. Nodus Labs research based on the study of PAF and INPEX – two cultural networks working in the field of contemporary dance. November, 2011.
Our new polysingularity blog is online. Polysingularity is an umbrella term for everything that expresses itself in its multiplicity and yet remains isolated in its specificity. It’s a sci-fi action that’s directed inwards, counteracting hyperconnectivity and technological singularity through dysfunctionally dynamic propositions.