Doctoral Dissertation Research: Emergence of Social Categories in Online Interactions

普林斯顿大学的分类系统，比如那些区分不同种族、不同生活方式或不同职业的人的分类系统，是社会秩序如何维持的核心。虽然社会学家已经彻底研究了社会类别具体化的划分如何对资源的不平等分配产生具体影响，但一个核心问题在很大程度上仍未得到回答：社会类别是如何产生的？本研究试图通过比较研究两个在线社区（一个音乐社交网站和一个金融投资社区）的社交互动如何产生类别来解决这个问题。这项研究中使用的在线数据记录了成千上万个人在近一年的时间里的全部活动，提供了一个在社会科学研究中罕见的优势：能够用微观的镜头追踪社会互动和个人行为的动态共同进化。利用创新的数据挖掘技术，本研究旨在调查人们通过区分不同类型的音乐作品或金融资产，相互学习将某些对象关联为构成各种类别的程度和方式，这些类别具有不同的社会意义。这个项目的潜在学术影响是双重的。从本质上讲，它有可能证明，金融和音乐这两个本质上不同的领域，一个似乎是由计算理性驱动的，另一个是由情感驱动的，是由类似的基本社会机制塑造的。在方法上，它引入了一套新颖的技术，作为建模和分析复杂动态社会过程的工具，这些工具将为未来的研究人员利用互联网革命为社会科学研究提供的大量数据库提供帮助。更广泛的影响：项目结果将在社会学范围内广为宣传，更广泛地说，通过在普通科学期刊上发表和参加跨学科会议以及专门讨论基于网络的研究和复杂系统研究的会议。预计会有两种具体的回报。首先，互联网被吹捧为一种克服网络同质化带来的劣势的方法，使弱势群体能够参与经济和社会活动。这项研究可能会揭示弱势群体的成员在多大程度上融入了网站创建的网络，并似乎从参与中受益；并可能帮助我们找到更有效地促进参与的方法。其次，本研究使用的数据与2008年金融危机前10个月的数据完全重合。从这项研究中得出的见解可能有助于更好地理解引发大萧条以来最严重经济衰退的社会动态。

SES-1029866Paul DiMaggioAmir GoldbergPrinceton UniversitySystems 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.