Sunbelt XXXI International Network for Social Network ... - INSNA

Chop And Change: Radical Creativity Through Co‐memberships In New Collaborationsvan den Born, Floor; Yong, KevynCentrality Measures in Social NetworksOrganizational Behavior, Creativity, Co‐membership tiesWED.PM1Group creativity is enhanced by social network positions that provide access to non‐redundant knowledge (Guimera, et al., 2007). As centrality is associatedwith deep expertise (Audia & Goncalo, 2007) centrality may “entrench” thinking which limits exploration and the discovery of new possibilities (Dane, 2010).However, this does not account for examples of central groups that continuously produce radical creativity. We theorize that long‐standing expert groupswhose members engage in new collaborations deal better with entrenched thinking. They produce more radical creativity than expert groups whose membersmainly connect with other long‐standing expert groups. To test this hypothesis, we collected data on 325 professional jazz ensembles in NYC. We measurecreativity by content‐coding critics’ reviews of the jazz group’s music albums. Analysis supports the hypothesis that jazz ensembles whose members continueto (re)engage with collaborators in newer groups are more likely to receive critical reviews appreciating their radical creativity then groups whose membersmainly collaborate in long‐standing groups. Our findings extend research on creativity by showing that network centrality can produce radical creativity.Although previous research emphasizes the positive impact of novices or outsiders on group creativity (Choi & Thompson, 2005), our findings indicate that anensemble’s radical creativity enhances when its members cause fluctuation around the focal group.Clusters, Isolates And Betweenness: Mapping The Political Talk On TwitterHimelboim, Itai; McCreery, Stephen; Smith, MarcPoster SessionVisualization, Twitter, Political Networks, Social MediaSAT.PM3This study applies social network analysis to explore political talk on Twitter. NodeXL was used to collect messages and relationships among users who postedtweets, based on four keywords that are expected to reflect political controversies: Obama, Tea Party, DNC, and GOP (500 users per keyword). The ratio ofisolates – those users with zero in‐ and out‐degree–were first measured as an indicator of users’ connectivity, and consequently their exposure, to others whodiscussed these issues. Next, retweets and mentions were examined to evaluate conversational aspects of political talk on these issues. Clusters wereidentified to examine cross‐ideological exposure. Last, individuals with high betweenness centrality were identified to explore the type of twitter accounts thatbridge distinct clusters in the networks. Findings suggest that Twitter political talk is hardly conversational. On average, only two of three users wereconnected to the network on a given topic. About a third of the messages were retweets of other messages. Only one of ten messages mentioned anotheruser or replied to another message, and very few messages were stated as questions or answers, suggesting more “talk” and less “conversation.”Furthermore, conversations were highly polarized, as political talk on Twitter created distinct liberal and conservative clusters. Twitter accounts of mediaorganizations were often found to bridge these polarized clusters.