Moving From Analysis to Design: Social Networks in the CSCW Context

The CSCW community has a tradition of adopting social and analytical theories to understand groups and group processes as well as when designing new systems to support and augment cooperative work. Social networks have a long tradition in sociology and cultural anthropology, but as yet, they have not broken into the CSCW mainstream. The key notion from network analysis, that the interconnections between people can be used to understand and improve their interactions, is one that has direct implications for CSCW research. Network models have clear implications for research into communication systems, teamwork, and knowledge management.

This full-day workshop seeks participation from social scientists and system designers to address the ways in which social networks can be adapted for use in analyzing cooperation and as a framework for considering new system designs. The workshop will consider four specific topics:

• Collection - How are social networks being collected (automatically, manually, quantitatively, qualitatively)? What do these networks actually represent? How are the networks validated?
• Tools - What is the state-of-the-art for analyzing, visualizing and representing social networks? In what context are these tools useful and how can the tools be adapted to specific CSCW situations?
• Application - Systems are embedding social networks into the fabric of system design. How are system designers adopting social networks? How are social networks supported by the system, software, or architecture?
• Evaluation - How does the use of a social network change, facilitate, or hinder users and their collaborations?

Joining the workshop
Individuals interested in participating in the workshop should submit a 4-page position paper describing work in one or more of the workshop topic areas above. Position papers will be reviewed by the organizers and authors will be notified by July 11th of acceptance to the workshop. One goal of the workshop is to nurture interdisciplinary applications of social networks that specifically consider CSCW perspective. Attention will be paid to representing a diverse spectrum of positions. The workshop will be limited to 15 participants.

Organizers
David W. McDonald, Assistant Professor, University of Washington, The Information School. dwmc@u.washington.edu
Danyel Fisher, University of California, Irvine, School of Information and Computer Science. danyelf@ics.uci.edu

Position Paper Deadline: June 25, 2003
Notification of Workshop Acceptance: July 11, 2003