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Marc Smith - Connected Action. Belmont, CA, US

Marc Smith

Chief Social Scientist | Connected Action

Belmont, CA, UNITED STATES

Internet sociologist, using social network analysis and visualization to map and understand social media

Media

Publications:

Marc Smith Publication Marc Smith Publication

Documents:

20120622 web sci12-won-marc smith-semantic and social network analysis of social media with nodexl 20120301 strata-marc smith-mapping social media networks with no coding using node xl

Photos:

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Audio/Podcasts:

Social

Biography

Marc Smith is a sociologist specializing in the social organization of online communities and computer mediated interaction. Smith leads the Connected Action consulting group and lives and works in Silicon Valley, California. Smith co-founded the Social Media Research Foundation (http://www.smrfoundation.org/), a non-profit devoted to open tools, data, and scholarship related to social media research.

Smith is the co-editor with Peter Kollock of Communities in Cyberspace (Routledge), a collection of essays exploring the ways identity; interaction and social order develop in online groups. Along with Derek Hansen and Ben Shneiderman, he is the co-author and editor of Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL: Insights from a connected world, from Morgan-Kaufmann which is a guide to mapping connections created through computer-mediated interactions.

Smith's research focuses on computer-mediated collective action: the ways group dynamics change when they take place in and through social cyberspaces. Many "groups" in cyberspace produce public goods and organize themselves in the form of a commons (for related papers see: http://www.connectedaction.net/marc-smith/). Smith's goal is to visualize these social cyberspaces, mapping and measuring their structure, dynamics and life cycles. He contributes to the open and free NodeXL project (http://www.codeplex.com/nodexl) that adds social network analysis features to the familiar Excel spreadsheet. NodeXL enables social network analysis of email, Twitter, Flickr, WWW, Facebook and other network data sets.

The Connected Action consulting group (http://www.connectedaction.net) applies social science methods in general and social network analysis techniques in particular to enterprise and internet social media usage. SNA analysis of data from message boards, blogs, wikis, friend networks, and shared file systems can reveal insights into organizations and processes. Community managers can gain actionable insights into the volumes of community content created in their social media repositories.

Smith received a B.S. in International Area Studies from Drexel University in Philadelphia in 1988, an M.Phil. in social theory from Cambridge University in 1990, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from UCLA in 2001. He is an adjunct lecturer at the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland. Smith is also a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Media-X Program at Stanford University.

Industry Expertise (10)

Information Services

Training and Development

Direct Marketing

Think Tanks

Advertising/Marketing

Research

Social Media

Media - Online

Internet

Market Research

Areas of Expertise (10)

Social Media

Social Networks

Business Collaboration

Information

Visualization

Social Science

Social Marketing

Networks

Infoviz

Collective Action

Accomplishments (4)

Ph.D. in Sociology from UCLA (professional)

2001 Ph.D. in sociology - dissertation: Mapping social cyberspaces

Member of the NodeXL project team: Social Media Network Analysis with no Coding! (professional)

NodeXL makes social network analysis as easy as making a pie chart. Over four years the NodeXL project team has released over a hundred updates to enhance the tool so that it is the easiest path for non-programmers to access, analyze, and visualize networks, often from social media sources like Twitter, Facebook, email, flickr, YouTube, and more.

Author of Analyzing social media networks with NodeXL: Insights from a connected world (professional)

Analyzing social media networks with NodeXL: Insights from a connected world is a introduction and guide to the use of social network techniques to better understand social media.

Author of Communities in Cyberspace (professional)

Communities in Cyberspace was among the earliest studies of the emerging world of social media, online and virtual community, social software, collaboration, and social networking.

Education (3)

UCLA: Ph.D., Sociology 2001

Dissertation: Mapping social cyberspaces

Cambridge University: M.Phil., Sociology 1989

Social Theory

Drexel University: B.S., International Area Studies 1988

Affiliations (6)

  • Association for Computing Machinery
  • Stanford University
  • University of Maryland
  • Connected Action Consulting, LLC
  • Social Media Research Foundation
  • International Network for Social Network Analysis

Event Appearances (16)

Title

Personal Digital Archives 2011  San Francisco, CA, USA

2011-02-24

Title

Mobile Web Africa 2010  Johannesburg, South Africa

2010-09-29

Title

Predictive Analytics World  San Francisco, CA, USA

2011-03-14

Title

Local Social Summit 2011  London, UK

2011-11-10

Title

USC Marshall School of Business: Communication Technology Executive Roundtable   Los Angeles, CA, USA

2011-03-10

Title

Predictive Analytics World 2011  New York City, USA

Title

3rd International Conference on Digital Culture  Seoul, Korea

2011-11-08

Title

Social Media Lecture Series  Purdue University

2011-09-23

Title

Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication  St. Louis, MO, USA

2011-08-09

Title

Nextwork  New York City, USA

2011-06-22

Title

Quantified Self 2011  Mountain View, CA, USA

2011-05-29

Title

Lipari School on Computational Social Science  Lipari, Italy

2011-07-19

Title

Oxford Internet Institute Summer Doctoral School  Oxford, England, UK

2011-07-13

Title

Global Spa Summit  Bali, Indonesia

2011-05-16

Title

Web Science Trust Graduate Summer School  Galway, Ireland

Title

Convergence Technology 2011  Seoul, Korea

2011-11-03

Sample Talks (1)

Mapping social media: finding key people and groups in the conversation crowd

People are talking about your product, group, business, event or service in social media - do you have a map to the the key people and groups in the crowd? Using tools from social network analysis and visualization it is now as easy as making a pie chart to map the connections among the people who are talking about the topics of interest to you. Using the free and open NodeXL application (http://nodexlcodeplex.com) you can quickly collect and map conversation networks on a wide range of topics.

Style

Availability

  • Keynote
  • Moderator
  • Panelist
  • Workshop Leader
  • Host/MC
  • Author Appearance

Fees

1500 to 15000 *Will consider certain engagements for no fee