Instructors' discussion design and facilitation have critical influences on online learning community development. Emerging network analysis methods were used to examine the development of an online ...learning community within a graduate-level course, the variations of an experienced instructor's discussion design, and the dynamics of her discussion facilitation. Results indicated that students gradually formed an interactive online learning community. The instructor, overall, played a facilitator role in this community; yet her participatory roles varied within different discussions during different time frames. Her participatory role evolved from a guide in the first class discussion, to varying roles, i.e., a facilitator, an observer, and a collaborator within different group discussions at the middle stages of the course, and to an observer in the course's later stages. Methodological implications for using social network analysis in online learning community research, and practical implications for designing and facilitating discussions that foster online learning communities were proposed.
•Emerging social network analysis methods were used to examine the development process of an online learning community.•Students formed an interactive and cohesive online learning community over time in discussions.•The instructor's participatory roles varied in class and group discussions at different time frames during the course.•Methodological implications for using social network analysis methods in online learning community research were proposed.•Practical implications for designing and facilitating discussions that can foster online learning communities were proposed.
Photovoltaic (PV) technology, as a low-carbon energy technology, is crucial to mitigating climate change and achieving sustainable development. China has the largest total number of PV technology ...patents in the world, but the lack of core technologies has restricted the further innovative development of China's PV industry. Therefore, it is necessary to clarify China's current PV technology accumulation to better catch up with key technology areas. To clearly describe the structural characteristics of China's PV technology innovation network, this study uses China's patent PV technology data over the past 20 years from the Incopat global patent database and analyses the structural characteristics of the network from the perspectives of one-mode and two-mode networks, using method of social network analysis (SNA). The results show that 1) the leading PV enterprises have basically formed relatively stable internal collaborations and that the scale of innovation network development has expanded rapidly, with very strong stamina; 2) with the development of China's PV industry, many innovative PV techniques have been developed by leading enterprises in the field of innovation and research and development (R&D) of PV technology, and among patent applicants with strong collaboration, kinship collaboration with investment relationships is dominant; 3) provinces participating in PV technology innovation are increasing significantly, the network is more influenced by leading nodes, and the eastern coastal provinces are pioneers in the innovation and R&D of PV technology; and 4) PV technological innovation collaboration between patent applicants and cities has changed from local collaboration to cross-regional collaboration, high-value areas are basically concentrated in the eastern coastal region of China, with scattered spatial characteristics, and cross-regional collaboration presents a “triangular” spatial structure, with the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei as cores. The conclusions can provide patent information support for scientific research on energy conservation and emission reduction to achieve low-carbon goals, and can also provide reference for policy formulation of renewable energy development and green development strategies.
•The structure of China's PV technology innovation network is taken as the study subject.•Clarify China's current PV technological accumulation.•Provide patent insights into China's PV technology innovation and development.
We investigate the network micro-selection mechanisms responsible for patterns of high school student extracurricular activity (ECA) participation, with a particular focus on those that can lead to ...ethnoracial segregation. We identify six types of mechanisms by which students select into activities (e.g., peer influence, homophily), which we test using a unique longitudinal dataset that combines student surveys with yearbook data on ECA involvement. These contexts represent two ethnoracially diverse U.S. high schools involving 2403 students and over 200 different activities spanning two school years. Using a stochastic actor-oriented model for two-mode networks, we find support for the hypothesized activity selection mechanisms. Follow-up analyses convey the relative importance of different mechanisms and inform our discussion of how ECA participation patterns develop and possible sources of segregation. Whereas selection is driven by mechanisms that include influence from friends and co-participants and similarity to fellow participants, no single overarching mechanism appears strong enough to fully account for ECA segregation
•We outline and test several classes of two-mode network selection mechanisms.•We analyze novel yearbook data on extracurricular activity membership networks.•Mechanisms driving activity selection include peer influence and comember similarity.•No selection mechanism appears inordinately responsible for segregated activities.•We discuss implications for understanding segregation in extracurricular activities.
This paper investigates the competition intensity of the energy flow among Chinese sectors by employing input‒output (I–O) analysis, a two-mode complex network and the resource allocation process ...(RAP). Specifically, there exists energy flow from the upstream sector to different downstream sectors, and there are competitive relationships among these different downstream sectors. Moreover, the total amount of energy consumption is constant, and the amount of energy required by each sector varies. Thus, the competition intensity among sectors also varies. The empirical results are as follows. First, the characteristics of energy flow and the competitive relationship have changed little, which means that the energy structure has almost not changed. Second, the same types of sectors have much closer links, indicating that the competition intensity in these sectors is much stronger. Third, there are two obvious features in the energy competition intensity of sectors: (1) Sectors that experience competition by others for energy are more than sectors that compete with others (2) The competition intensity among sectors and in industry as a whole gradually decrease from 2012 to 2020. This study helps provide insights by analyzing competition intensity and by providing suggestions for energy distribution.
•Providing a new research perspective for studying energy flow.•Combining multiple methods to study the competition intensity of energy flow.•Sectors in the same type exhibit stronger competitive intensity.•Providing recommendations for policy makers in energy distribution.
Direct and indirect contacts among animal holdings are important in the spread of infectious diseases. The objectives of this study were to describe networks of pig movements and the sharing of ...trucks used for those movements between swine farms in four Canadian regions using network analysis tools and to obtain contact parameters for infectious disease spread simulation models. Four months of swine movement data from a pilot pig traceability programme were used. Two types of networks were created using three time scales (weekly, monthly and the full study period): one‐mode networks of farm‐to‐farm direct contact representing animal shipments and two‐mode networks representing the sharing of trucks between farms. Contact patterns among farms were described by estimating a range of relevant network measures. The overall network neglecting the four regions consisted of 145 farms, which were connected by 261 distinct links. A total of 184 trucks were used to transport 2043 shipments of pigs during the study period. The median in‐ and out‐degree for the overall one‐mode network was 1 and ranged from 0 to 26 and 0 to 10, respectively. The overall one‐mode network had heterogeneous degree distribution, a high clustering coefficient and shorter average path length than would be expected for randomly generated networks of similar size. On average one truck was shared by four farms in the overall network, or by three farms when considered the monthly and weekly networks. Degree distribution of the two‐mode overall network demonstrated characteristics of power‐law distribution. For more than 50% of shipments on any given day, the same truck was used for at least one other shipment. Findings from this study are in agreement with previous work, which suggested that swine movement networks exhibit small‐world and scale‐free topologies. Furthermore, trucks used for the shipment of pigs can play an important role in connecting otherwise unconnected farms and may increase the spread of disease.
We investigate the relationship between platform visibility and meaning making. Drawing on a quanti-quali investigation of hashtag practices in a cross-platform dataset, we explore how hereditary ...cancer is constructed, as an issue, on social media. Our findings provide strong evidence of significant variations across Instagram, TikTok and Twitter, with hashtag practices on these platforms tapping into platform-specific understandings of hereditary cancer: a pink ribbon issue on Instagram, the opportunity for non-normative exposures of bodies, pain and acceptance on TikTok and a scientific matter on Twitter. Platforms do not dictate choice, but their encounter with user interpretations, given similar material constraints (hashtag technology), lead to very different affordances. These affordances shape practices and, ultimately, meaning making. While raising concerns on the impact platform visibility might have on experiences and understandings of hereditary cancer, our work suggests broader implications for how we imagine and respond to the issues we care about.
Abstract
Network science is a powerful tool for analyzing complex systems in fields ranging from sociology to engineering to biology. This article is focused on generative models of large-scale ...bipartite graphs, also known as two-way graphs or two-mode networks. We propose two generative models that can be easily tuned to reproduce the characteristics of real-world networks, not just qualitatively but quantitatively. The characteristics we consider are the degree distributions and the metamorphosis coefficient. The metamorphosis coefficient, a bipartite analogue of the clustering coefficient, is the proportion of length-three paths that participate in length-four cycles. Having a high metamorphosis coefficient is a necessary condition for close-knit community structure. We define edge, node and degreewise metamorphosis coefficients, enabling a more detailed understanding of the bipartite connectivity that is not explained by degree distribution alone. Our first model, bipartite Chung–Lu, is able to reproduce real-world degree distributions, and our second model, bipartite block two-level Erdös–Rényi, reproduces both the degree distributions as well as the degreewise metamorphosis coefficients. We demonstrate the effectiveness of these models on several real-world data sets.
Over 40 years of conventional economic analysis has not reached consensus on the effect of foreign aid on recipient country growth. We provide new insight into this relationship by using a network ...approach to characterize the topological properties of the Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) foreign aid network. Viewing the OECD foreign aid community as an interdependent and complex system, we characterize not only the amount of aid but also the position of both donor and recipient within the network. We find that the degree centrality of the recipient, with an edge inclusion threshold that sets a minimum share of a donor’s aid to a particular recipient, is significantly correlated with the growth impact of that donor’s aid. Contrarily, aid is uncorrelated with growth with a recipient‐side filter on the importance of the donor to the recipient. These results suggest that the importance of a recipient within the donor’s network, rather than the volume of aid alone, is associated with the growth impact of bilateral aid. We explore mechanisms for these findings that include the complementarity of aid from multiple attentive donors. Our findings speak to the aid–growth puzzle and suggest that network metrics may illuminate non‐obvious channels of aid impact.
In the paper we show that the bibliographic data can be transformed into a collection of compatible networks. Using network multiplication different interesting derived networks can be obtained. In ...defining them an appropriate normalization should be considered. The proposed approach can be applied also to other collections of compatible networks. The networks obtained from the bibliographic data bases can be large (hundreds of thousands of vertices). Fortunately they are sparse and can be still processed relatively fast. We answer the question when the multiplication of sparse networks preserves sparseness. The proposed approaches are illustrated with analyses of collection of networks on the topic "social network" obtained from the Web of Science. The works with large number of co-authors add large complete subgraphs to standard collaboration network thus bluring the collaboration structure. We show that using an appropriate normalization their effect can be neutralized. Among other, we propose a measure of collaborativness of authors with respect to a given bibliography and show how to compute the network of citations between authors and identify citation communities.
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