Presentazione di Paolo Massa nell'ambito del Seminario residenziale “L’approccio territoriale tra aiuto e crescita” - 22-23 giugno 2012 - Villa Flangini - Asolo - Organizzato dal SerAT (Servizio Alcologia e Tabagismo Ulss 8) Con il contributo di ACAT-ULSS 8 onlus e Cooperativa Sonda. Con il patrocinio di Alcologia Ecologica

1. Seminario residenziale
“L’approccio territoriale tra aiuto e crescita”
22-23 giugno 2012
Villa Flangini - Asolo
Organizzato dal SerAT (Servizio Alcologia e Tabagismo Ulss 8)
Con il contributo di ACAT-ULSS 8 onlus e Cooperativa Sonda
Con il patrocinio di Alcologia Ecologica

2. Rete e Reti
Per-che' e per-chi?
Paolo Massa
http://www.gnuband.org

3. Chi sono io
Laurea e dottorato in informatica: riduzionista ;)
MA ricerca su social networking http://sonet.fbk.eu
E ~volontariato: parrocchia, Caritas, cooperazione
internazionale
PoV “diverso”

4. Seminario residenziale
“L’approccio territoriale tra aiuto e crescita”
22-23 giugno 2012
Villa Flangini - Asolo
Organizzato dal SerAT (Servizio Alcologia e Tabagismo Ulss 8)
Con il contributo di ACAT-ULSS 8 onlus e Cooperativa Sonda
Con il patrocinio di Alcologia Ecologica

6. Cosa voglio fare
Parlare di “rete”: evoluzione del
concetto, serve come modello
o e' una keyword?
Fornire spunti a partire da
ricerche su “reti”

7. Le Città invisibili Italo Calvino
A Ersilia, per stabilire i rapporti che reggono la vita della città, gli
abitanti tendono dei fili tra gli spigoli delle case, bianchi o neri o
grigi o bianco–e–neri a seconda se segnano relazioni di
parentela, scambio, autorità, rappresentanza. Quando i fili
sono tanti che non ci si può piú passare in mezzo, gli abitanti vanno
via: le case vengono smontate; restano solo i fili e i sostegni dei fili.
Dalla costa d’un monte, accampati con le masserizie, i profughi di
Ersilia guardano l’intrico di fili tesi e pali che s’innalza nella
pianura. È quello ancora la città di Ersilia, e loro sono niente.
Riedificano Ersilia altrove. Tessono con i fili una figura simile che
vorrebbero piú complicata e insieme piú regolare dell’altra. Poi l’
abbandonano e trasportano ancora piú lontano sé e le case. Cosí
viaggiando nel territorio di Ersilia incontri le rovine delle città
abbandonate, senza le mura che non durano, senza le ossa dei morti
che il vento fa rotolare: ragnatele di rapporti intricati che cercano
una forma.

8. “fare rete” in Google
6: 0-1995
154: 1995-2000
614: 2000-2005
9.000: 2005-2010
47.400: 2010-2012
Rete = panacea?

9. Rete = panacea? … non proprio ;)

10. Un po' di storia
sulle reti

11. Internet: decentralized by design
“On Distributed Communication
Networks,” Paul Baran. 1964.
A network without central
authority or single outage
point.
Resistant to attacks (to single
nodes).
US DARPA (Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency)
Internet is NOT = Web

13. Resistente
Inclusiva (democratica?)
Efficiente?
Tutti pari? Chi comanda?

14. Reti Peer2Peer
VS
Client­Server (Web)

15. Graph theory
1735 - Seven Bridges of Königsberg – Euler
v

16. Social networks

17. The simplest network is a dyad or pair
Dyads agglomerate to form
large interconnected webs
Node=person, Edge=relationship

18. Network:
the focus in on
the edge,
the relationship,
the “thing” between 2
nodes.
Maria Giovanni

20. First studies = small samples
Jacob Moreno introduced sociogram (1930 – Who shall survive?)
Relationship via interviews.
Who do you
 like,
 eat Pizza with
 see after work
 (any relationship)

21. The study of networks has depended on a visual thinking
since the beginning
Social Network Analysis

22. "If we ever get to the point of charting a whole city or a
whole nation, we would have … a picture of a vast solar
system of intangible structures, powerfully influencing
conduct, as gravitation does in space. Such an invisible
structure underlies society and has its influence in
determining the conduct of society as a whole."
J.L. Moreno, New York Times, April 13, 1933

23. Not all edges are equal!
Strength of weak ties.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tie-network.jpg
Granovetter. 1973. The American Journal of Sociology.
Most jobs were found through "weak" acquaintances.
(Different) value in social relationships.

24. The Strength of Weak Ties
Strong ties (i.e. family members) affect people more deeply
Weak ties often link more people.
Photo by johntrainor, Flickr

25. Power in Numbers
Social ties, rather than money, were used as collateral and
could be used to guarantee a loan.
Yunus founded the Grameen Bank which now fosters social
networks which
• optimize trust
• connect groups through weaker ties
• help find creative solutions through connections
Serge Latouche = ricchezza nelle relazioni (Il pensiero creativo contro
l'economia dell'assurdo) Photo by Inkyhack, Flickr

26. Social capital
Putnam 1995 “Bowling alone: America's Declining
Social Capital:
~500,000 interviews in US (1975­2000) ­­>
decline of social capital over time
(belong to fewer orgs (­58%),
know their neighbors less (­35%), ...)

27. Bridge (ponte)
Legame che connette due parti della rete che sarebbero altrimenti
separate (componente connessa).
Rimuovere un bridge significa sconnettere il grafo, ovvero dividerlo in due grafi
piu' piccoli, e non connessi tra di loro

28. Network structure and role
Connector – span different worlds (central in
network)
“Connectors” have many weak ties to members outside
their group.
Connector
Mavens ­ information specialists ­ start word­of­
mouth epidemics (good for marketing)

29. Specific social roles
Finding social roles in Wikipedia. Proceedings of the
2011 iConference.

30. Operatori come connector tra due famiglie?
Oppure quale altro “ruolo sociale”?
Chi e' connector? E chi connette?
Cambia nel tempo?
Connector

31. Reti come sistemi dinamici
Dynamic Network Analysis
Monitorare lo stato di salute di una rete? Prevederne la
fine?
Bowling alone and trust decline
in social network sites
Paolo Massa, Martino Salvetti,
Danilo Tomasoni
SocialCom 2011

32. Social Network Analysis

33. We shape our network
1. We determine structure of our network:
how many people we are connected to
The average American has 4 close social contacts known as their
“core discussion network”
The same number of people can be arranged and connected in different ways,
and have different topologies

34. We shape our network
2. We influence the density of interconnections
between friends and family
we introduce friends from separate groups to one another

35. We shape our network
3. We control how “central” we are within the
social network
Are you the life of the party? Or the wall flower?

37. Linked: The New Science of Networks, 2002.
Barabási, Albert­László, physics.
Data, data, data!
All networks (Web links, Internet cables,
collaboration among actors, scientists,
sexual interaction, biological networks
of cells, food webs in ecology, phone
call patterns, word co­occurrence in
text, neural network connectivity of
flatworms, conformational states in
protein folding) …
Same property = small world, power law

38. One law behind everything?!? (2002)

39. Tracking the Spread of Information
Word of mouth (marketing, new ideas and products),
Viruses (epidemiology, SARS), ...
Photo by Christian Keenan

40. 6 degrees of separation
Milgram 1967 ­ 296 letters to reach target
Average path length ~ 6 (just 64 successes!)
Folklore but the message is
“It's a small world”
Connected: How Kevin Bacon cured cancer
Movie: 6 degrees of separation

41. Social Networking Sites
Facebook: 800 million active users (?!?)
Twitter, Ebay, P2P, …
Rendono visibili
le “reti degli altri”

42. http://qualitypoint.blogspot.com/2010/05/list-of-social-networking-sites.html

43. Not so virtual worlds
Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2007). The benefits of
Facebook "friends:" Social capital and college students' use of
online social network sites. Journal of Computer­Mediated
Communication
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue4/ellison.html
2010 ­ Social Networking Affects Brains Like Falling in Love ­
Paul Zak. "Your brain interpreted tweeting as if you were
directly interacting with people you cared about or had empathy
for," Zak says. "E­connection is processed in the brain like an in­
person connection."
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/147/doctor­love.html

44. Networks
as
a
lens
to
understand
Society

47. TrentiniNelMondo – http://next.trentininelmondo.it

48. Self­awareness of you in the network is
important?

49. E io?
 Bisogna essere coscienti della rete (big picture)?
 Delle proprie relazioni (ego­network)?
 Della propria “posizione” nella rete?
 Del proprio ruolo?
 A cosa e' utile? A chi?

50. Trust networks
Goal: influenzare la “cultura” del bere.
Ci si fida dei propri peer, si mutuano i loro
comportamenti
Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social
Networks and How They Shape Our Lives,
Christakis, Nicholas A.; Fowler, James H

52. What spread over social networks?
Do behaviours of your connected nodes
influence yours?
Framingham Heart Study: started in 1948,
5,000 participants, multiple generations,
tracking health and contact information every
two to four years.

53. No Laughing Matter
In 1962 in Tanzania an epidemic of laughing spread through
many villages resulting in the closing of several schools
This was a “mass psychogenic illness” – also known as
“epidemic hysteria” and was traced to three teenage girls
Photo by Casey Lehman Photo by Federia Olivieri Photo by k-girl, Fli

54. Family Feelings
Experiment using beepers to record and track the emotional
states of family members
• The strongest path was from daughters to parents
• Parents had little affect on daughters
• Fathers had a significant effect on wives and sons
P
h
ot
o
s
b
y
M
What this means…when a father returns grumpy from work the whole household ik
e
soon becomes miserable C
a

55. Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network:
longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart
James H Fowler and Nicholas A Christakis, 2008
4739 individuals followed from 1983 to 2003.
People’s happiness depends on the happiness of others with
whom they are connected. See happiness, like health, as a
collective phenomenon.
Objectives To evaluate whether happiness can spread from person to
person and whether niches of happiness form within social
networks.
Results: Clusters of happy and unhappy people are visible in the network, and the relationship between
people’s happiness extends up to three degrees of separation (for example, to the friends of one’s
friends’ friends).People who are surrounded by many happy people and those who are central
in the network are more likely to become happy in the future. Longitudinal statistical models
suggest that clusters of happiness result from the spread of happiness and not just a tendency for
people to associate with similar individuals. A friend who lives within a mile (about 1.6 km) and who
becomes happy increases the probability that a person is happy by 25% (95% confidence interval 1% to
57%). Similar effects are seen in coresident spouses (8%, 0.2% to 16%), siblings who live within a mile
(14%, 1% to 28%), and next door neighbours (34%, 7% to 70%). Effects are not seen between coworkers.
The effect decays with time and with geographical separation.
(credits: Photo by beija-flor released on Flickr under Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative license)

56. “Alone in the Crowd: The Structure and Spread of Loneliness in a
Large Social Network,” 2009, James H Fowler and Nicholas A
Christakis, The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
In a 10­year study of 5,100 people and their social contacts,
researchers tracked feelings of loneliness over time by asking
participants how many days a week they felt lonely. What they
discovered was that loneliness could be contagious and
followed a distinct path as it spread through social networks.
Over time, each additional day of loneliness per week that people
experience leads to a little more than one extra day of loneliness
per month among those in their social network
The average person experiences loneliness about 48 days a year, but
having a lonely friend can add 17 days of loneliness annually. By
comparison, every additional friend can decrease loneliness by about 5
percent, which translates to about two and a half fewer lonely days a
year.

57. The Spread of Alcohol Consumption Behavior in a Large Social
Network, J.N. Rosenquist, J. Murabito, J.H. Fowler, and N.A. Christakis,
Annals of Internal Medicine (April 2010)
Drinking habits can be contagious: if a close connection (friend, relative,
coworker) drank heavily — defined as an average of one drink per day for
women and two drinks per day for men — participants were 50% more likely to
drink heavily themselves; if someone connected by two degrees of separation (a
friend of a friend) drank heavily, participants were 36% more likely to do so.
The social impact of drinking continued to three degrees of separation — that
is, if your friend’s mom’s cousin drinks heavily, you’re about 15% more likely
to do so too.
For every social contact who abstained from alcohol, a person’s likelihood of
heavy drinking decreased by 10%.
The study findings “reinforce the idea that drinking is a public health and clinical
problem that involves groups of interconnected people who evince shared
behaviors, and targeting those behaviors would rightly involve addressing
groups and not just individuals.”

58. What spreads over social networks?
Christakis NA, Fowler JH. Dynamic spread of Happiness in a large social
network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart
Study, 2008.
Cacioppo JT, Fowler JH, Christakis NA, Alone in the Crowd: The Structure
and Spread of Loneliness in a Large Social Network 2008.
J.N. Rosenquist, J. Murabito, J.H. Fowler, and N.A. Christakis, "The Spread of
Alcohol Consumption Behavior in a Large Social Network," Annals of
Internal Medicine 152(7): 426­433 (April 2010)
Christakis NA, Fowler JH. The collective dynamics of Smoking in a large
social network. N Engl J Med2008;358:2249­58.
Christakis NA, Fowler JH. The spread of Obesity in a large social network
over 32 years. N Engl J Med2007;357:370­9.

60. The grand theory of networking
Obesity, happiness, smoking, loneliness, … vaseline
spread across networks.
http://www.gnuband.org/2010/01/13/networks_of_loneliness/

61. Vladimir Hudolin
"...se i Club lavorano per la
pace interiore di ognuno di
noi, è indubitabile che
questa pace verrà
trasmessa alle persone che
ci sono più vicine e poi si
allargherà, a macchia
d’olio, a tutta la nostra
comunità, portandoci così a
riappropriarci del nostro
futuro..."

62. Chapter 9
The Whole is Great

63. Since the Beginning…
Since the beginnings of human civilization, connections have
shaped and aided our development as a race.
Even the Bible refers to
the strength of ties in
passages like the Tower
of Babylon and the story
of Jericho.
Photo by jankie, Flickr

64. Since the Beginning…
Theorists from Hobbes to Rousseau have speculated about “social
contracts” and what would make the best form of human interaction.
Photos by The National Gallery, London and Sir Paul, Flickr

65. The Human Superorganism
By joining together, humans are
able to accomplish feats otherwise
unimaginable, just like ants
cooperate to make an ant hill.
Photos by stevendepolo and sara.atkins, Flickr

66. The Human Superorganism
Cooperation is key.
Networks of cooperation can lead to self-sustaining “organisms,”
whether it be cells in a human body or human bodies in a
neighborhood!
Photos by adrigu and gaminrey and Editor B, Flickr

67. The Human Superorganism
With this cooperation, networks can do great things.
●
However, the power and influence of networks can also be
dangerous.
Shoes taken from victims
Habitat for Humanity Volunteers during World War 2
Photos by KidMoxie and tbertor1, Flickr

68. Social Network Inequality
The connections we have with others can influence us to do
many things from giving more to charity to stealing a car.
Our connections depend on where we are located in our social
network.
There is “positional inequality” -- not because of who we are but
because of who we are connected to.

69. Social Network Inequality
If you are connected to the right
people, you may have opportunities to
get jobs, gifts, or other extra benefits.
If you are connected to others you
could be influenced to commit crimes
or eat unhealthy food.
Position matters.
Photos by Andyrob and alexik, Flickr

70. Connected
Social networks seem to have so much power and influence
over us…
But remember:
Social networks are not just about the influence other have
over us, but also about the effect we have on others!

71. Be the
change you
want to see
in the
world

72. Be the
change you
want to see
in the
network

74.  Riprendere “rete come modello o solo come
keyword?”

75. Rete o …?
 Rete?
 O comunita'?
 O gruppo?
 O …?