Social networks – Page 3 – Data Big and Small

Hierarchy, market or network? The disruptive world of the digital platform

Economics traditionally considered firms and markets as two alternative ways of coordinating economic activities. Nobel prize winner Ronald H. Coase (1937) demonstrated that it all hinges on “transaction costs”, such as the need to search for a trade partner, the time needed to negotiate a contract, the legal expenses to draw it up and if necessary, to enforce it. When these costs are high, then hiring people in a firm is the right solution. When they are low, then a harmonious state will emerge spontaneously from the choices of independent, self-employed individuals. The difference, further emphasized by the work of Oliver Williamson, another Nobel, is between the world of bureaucracy, hierarchy and salaried work, and the world of the market and myriad micro-entrepreneurs.

This dichotomous description seemed reductive to economic sociologists, and Mark Granovetter (1985) pointed to social networks as coordination devices. Networks enable circulation of knowledge, formation of trust, emergence of shared norms in informal ways, thereby lowering costs and smoothing economic transactions. Walter W. Powell (1990) saw networks as an alternative to market and hierarchy, while others thought of it as a complement rather than a substitute. In some cases, the relevance of networks is flagrant: think of “collegial“, horizontal organizations such as legal partnerships, which are clearly not markets, and which have no vertical hierarchy either.

The rise of online platforms challenges these older views today. Powered by digital data and matching algorithms, platforms are meeting places for actors on the two sides of a market: riders and drivers (Uber, Lyft, BlaBlaCar), guests and hosts (Airbnb), buyers and sellers (eBay), and so on. Officially, platforms are intermediaries only, able to put in touch, say, those who need a lift and those who have a car, so that they can share the ride. Platforms don’t employ drivers and don’t own cars.

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Second European Social Networks Conference (EUSN 2016)

I am lucky enough to be part of the organizing committee of the second European Social Networks Conference, which will take place at Sciences Po Paris on 14-17 June 2016. The EUSN conferences have been created to offer a single place for the European community of social networks researchers to gather, in place of previous national annual conferences; and has been endorsed as a regional conference by INSNA, the international association of network researchers. A first, successful EUSN conference was held in Barcelona in 2014.

Somehow, the European social networks crowd seems more diverse than the US-based core of scholars who gave life to INSNA and drove its development over time. While remaining affectionate to the INSNA format and philosophy (for example, by selecting proposals only on the basis of an abstract, to be maximally inclusive), the European conferences can afford exploring new ideas, and variants on classical schemes. In particular, this year, we are trying to enlarge patricipation and attract delegates from a wider variety of disciplines, beyond those traditionally most represented – the social sciences, mathematics, and more recently statistics. Hence for example, the keynote speakers will give a sense of continuity – we will have social anthropologists Miranda Lubbers and José Luis Molina, the organisers of the first EUSN in Barcelona, on “Ethnography and multilevel networks in the study of migration and transnationalism”. But the plenary speech is an opening to recent, relevant developments in computer science: Jean-Daniel Fekete of INRIA will talk about “Challenges in social network visualization: bigger, dynamic, multivariate”.

Submissions are now invited for paper and poster proposals (abstract only – deadline 16 February 2016). There are special thematic sessions and general sessions, and all fields are welcome. A prize will be awarded for the best poster – where all participants will be able to vote.

The day before the conference, 15 training workshops are offered into the theory, data collection, methods of analysis and visualization of social networks.

IMPORTANT DATES:
16 February: Deadline for abstract/poster proposals, and pre-registration opening
1 March: Registration opening
16 March: Notification to authors
18 April: Early registration closure
14 June: Workshops
15-17 June: Conference

Discussing platform cooperativism

On Monday, 7 December 2015 at Telecom ParisTech, I was discussant at a seminar by New School scholar Trebor Scholz on “Unpacking Platform Cooperativism“.

Internet platforms carry an unprecedented potential of value creation, exploiting the extraordinary power of data and algorithms to extract and distribute information to an extent never seen before. Information, we know since Hayek’s times, is the fuel that keeps markets going, that eliminates “lemons” and ensures an ever-better coordination between buyers and sellers, borrowers and lenders, or landlords and tenants. At the same time, the internet has channeled the dream of a viable non-market society, since Rheingold’s 1993 revival of the “community” and Barbrook’s 1998 “hi-tech gift economy“. So, can we put this informational efficiency to the service of a more humane economy, based on relationships, solidarity and reciprocation, rather than on the sheer market system?

The so-called “sharing economy” suggests answers, but also displays a tension: the efforts of myriad grassroots associations to develop collaboration as a value and a practice, sharply contrasts the spectacular growth of firms like Airbnb and Uber, now large multinationals, and their alleged cavalier attitude to anti-trust regulations and workers’ rights. If some say Uber is not really about sharing and collaboration, it is difficult to draw the line.

This ambiguity is fostered by a public discourse that focuses on the sharing of assets – the spare room in your home, or a sit in your car – that digital platforms enable. Asset-sharing has economic and social appeal: it increases efficiency by preventing assets from lying idle, while reducing waste, shifting emphasis away from consumerist values (“access is better than ownership“), and facilitating sociality beyond mere consumption.

But it is often forgotten that asset-sharing does not produce value by itself: it involves extra labour. In economic jargon, capital and labour and complementary production factors. In practice, if you want to put your spare room on Airbnb, you must produce an ad, monitor your message inbox and reply swiftly. You must clean the room and do the laundry before and after a guest’s visit. You must show your guests around when they arrive.

More importantly, the very opportunity of asset-sharing changes the incentives that shape labour supply – people’s willingness to sell their time and effort against a payment. Because of the expected compensation, some people will renounce use of a (non-spare) room to accommodate visitors instead, and others will do more journeys to drive passengers around – so it’s not really about sharing unused assets, it is about self-employment and starting a micro-business. A work opportunity as a complement to (and sometimes a substitute for) a main job.

This is where debates on internet platforms and the sharing economy rejoin the growing literature on digital labour — and where the contribution of Trebor Scholz is illuminating. Where others see assets (ie, capital), he sees labour. He shows us that the bottlenecks here are about labour, not capital, and that the success — be it economic or social– of the sharing economy is closely tied to the destiny of labour. Whether it appears on the surface as self-employment, micro-entrepreneurship or salaried work, doesn’t really matter. Trebor reminds us of Marx’s fundamental principle that production relations are central to our (capitalist) society, and value generation rests ultimately on labor. If this very crucial part of the human experience goes wrong, even the best side of the sharing economy – the one that endorses trust, reciprocity, and zero-waste – may fail to perform any transformative effects on society.

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