Two conflicting conceptual frameworks exist regarding the geographic ramification of social networks that have proliferated on the Internet. On the one hand, there is a widespread belief that the Internet allows social communication without respect to geographic location or time -- that "distance is dead" and "the Earth is flat." On the other hand, geographers long have used distance and various surrogates for distance, such as cost and travel time, to understand and explain human spatial behavior in migration as well as social interaction expressed in volumes of telephone calls and travel patterns. Many arguments support the contention that reality now combines the two -- that social networks still are constrained by location and distance, although to a much smaller extent than before the advent of the Internet. Face-to-face interaction still is necessary or preferred in some contexts, with cultural, religious, and linguistic affiliation spatially influenced to some extent. Furthermore, access to the Internet is severely constrained in many places. To address this topic, a workshop will be conducted on the topic of Spatial and Temporal Constraints on Social Networks at the University of California-Santa Barbara on December 13-14, 2010. The workshop will bring together about 40 experts from academia, the private sector, and government agencies who have been working on all aspects of this issue, from quantitative geographers to social network analysts. It also will include computer scientists, spatial statisticians, and specialists in many other relevant areas. The workshop will follow the model of roughly 40 previous specialist meetings organized on cutting-edge topics in geographic information science by the Center for Spatial Studies and its precursors at the University of California, Santa Barbara since 1988. It will include context-setting presentations on the state of the art, plenary and small-group discussions, and a final plenary discussion to identify and prioritize a research agenda, and to plan next steps to ensure that the momentum created by the workshop is not lost.
This workshop will advance conceptual frameworks for addressing volunteered or crowd-sourced geographic information (VGI) as well as related issues associated with the transformation of space and place by contemporary telecommunications technologies. The results of the workshop will be disseminated via the Web as well as a range of follow-on activities, including special sessions at conferences and publications. Research on the topic of the workshop and stimulated by the workshop and subsequent activities will produce results that will be of significant value to a number of communities, including mapping agencies and companies that increasingly rely on VGI generated by networked volunteers and the intelligence community.
This award helped to fund a meeting of specialists from many disciplines to examine how space and time affect the development and operation of social networks. The meeting was held in Santa Barbara in December 2010 over a period of two days, and chaired by the Principal Investigator Michael Goodchild (University of California, Santa Barbara) and by Kathleen Carley (Carnegie Mellon University). Participants were drawn from many disciplines, including geography, geographic information science, emergency management, social networks, and computer science. The meeting Web site (www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/projects/spatio-temporal/) includes position papers and bios from all of the participants, the agenda and presentations, and the final report. The impact of the Internet on human communication and the organization of social networks has been profound, greatly reducing the effects of distance and time differences, to the point where some have speculated that geography no longer matters in human communication. Strong spatial and temporal constraints persist, however, because of the importance of human contact and the spatial and temporal context of human actions. These issues are especially important during emergencies, when social networks play an increasingly critical role in the dissemination of information; in the development of communities of interest; in the gathering of intelligence; and in many other areas of human activity. The specialist meeting included presentations, together with plenary and small-group discussions. It resulted in a detailed research agenda, as well as in less tangible contacts and nascent collaborations between participants.
