Speaker: John McLevey
A recording of the lecture can be found below.
In conjunction with John McLevey’s talk, WICI is hosting its first challenge of the 2014-2015 year. We’re looking for short essays (1000-1500 words) about how the structure of communication and collaboration networks might shape the flow of innovative ideas in open source communities. This challenge is open to students — undergraduate or graduate — at any accredited university. Please visit the call for entries page for more details.
Abstract
How do geographically-dispersed, Internet-enabled, and cross-sectoral collaborations shape the development of technical systems? In this talk, I analyze a whole communication network of Linux developers from January 1, 2013 — June 31, 2014. I compare the structure of this real world network with two models grounded in theory and substantive literature: small world, and structurally cohesive. I show that the developer network is structurally-cohesive, with two to four densely connected cores consistently occupying the center of the network from month to month. I discuss the substantive and theoretical implications of this research for understanding open source development and the collaborative design of large technical systems.
Presenter bio
John McLevey is an assistant professor in the departments of knowledge integration, and sociology and legal studies. McLevey earned his PhD in sociology from McMaster University. His work has recently been published by Canadian Review of Sociology, and is forthcoming from Social Studies of Science.