Doctoral Dissertation Research: Emergence of Social Categories in Online Interactions

Princeton University, Princeton NJ

Investigators

Abstract

SES-1029866 Paul DiMaggio Amir Goldberg Princeton University Systems of classification, such as those that distinguish between people of different ethnicities, lifestyles or occupations, are central to how social order is sustained. While sociologists have thoroughly investigated how divisions reified by social categories have concrete consequences for the unequal distribution of resources, a central question remains largely unanswered: how do social categories come about? This study attempts to address this question by comparatively examining how categories emerge through social interaction in two online communities: a music social network website and a financial investment community. The online data used in this study, which record the entire set of activities of tens of thousands of individuals over a period of almost one year, provide a vantage point that is rare in social scientific research: the ability to trace, with a microscopic lens, the dynamic co-evolution of social interaction and individual behavior. Using innovative data mining techniques, this study aims to investigate the extent to which and the ways in which, by distinguishing between different types of musical pieces or financial assets, people learn from one another to associate certain objects as making up various categories, which carry different social meanings. This project's potential scholarly impact is twofold. Substantively, it has the potential of demonstrating that the two inherently different domains of finance and music, one seemingly motivated by calculative rationality, the other by emotion, are shaped by similar rudimentary social mechanisms. Methodologically, it introduces a set of novel techniques as tools for modeling and analyzing complex dynamic social processes that will be of use for future researchers in harnessing the vast repositories of data made available by the internet revolution for social scientific research. Broader Impacts: Project results will be well-publicized within sociology and, more broadly, through publication in general-interest scientific journals and participation in interdisciplinary meetings and conferences devoted to web-based research and the study of complex systems. Concrete payoffs of two kinds are anticipated. First, the Internet has been touted as a way to overcome disadvantages resulting from network homophily for underrepresented groups to participate in economic and social activities. This study may cast light on the extent to which members of underrepresented groups are integrated into and appear to benefit from participation in the networks that the websites create; and may help us develop ways to enhance participation more effectively. Second, the data used in this study fully overlap with the first ten months of the 2008 financial crisis. Insights drawn from this study may be useful for understanding better the social dynamics that fueled the most severe economic recession since the Great Depression.