Jessica Kropczynski

Social networks of Rafinesque's big-eared bats (Corynorhinus rafinesquii) in bottomland hardwood forests

Abstract Understanding social relationships and organization in colonial bat species can provide valuable insight into species ecology and potentially aid in conservation efforts of rare bat species. We applied social network analysis to describe social relationships and organization in 3 colonies of Rafinesques big-eared bats (Corynorhinus rafinesquii) roosting in bottomland hardwood forests in Kentucky. We radiotracked 48 adult big-eared bats to 64 day-roosts over 549 bat-days during the summers of 2009–2011. We measured homophily, network centralization, density, transitivity, and core–periphery structure of networks of bats sharing common roosts, and we measured degree centrality of nodes (bats or roosts) within networks. Patterns of ties within each colony were homophilous by sex (E-I index = −0.87). Males were consistently the least central nodes in bat networks. Bat network centralization ranged from 1.2% to 40% among colonies, and roost network centralization ranged from 17% to 40%. The colony exhibiting the least centralized and most dense bat network also occupied habitat with low roost availability. This roost network was highly centralized, with bats frequently aggregating at a single roost. The colony with the most centralized and least dense bat network occupied habitat with a greater availability of roosts, resulting in diffuse networks of bats and roosts. Transitivity decreased after young became volant in the colony with highest roost availability. Our findings suggest that social structure in colonies of Rafinesques big-eared bats is affected by the sex of individuals in colonies, reproductive season, and the preponderance of available day-roosting habitat.

Exploring the ecosystem of software developers on GitHub and other platforms

GitHub provides various social features for developers to collaborate with others. Those features are important for developers to coordinate their work (Dabbish et al., 2012; Marlow et al., 2013). We hypothesized that the social system of GitHub users was bound by system interactions such that contributing to similar code repositories would lead to users following one another on GitHub or vice versa. Using a quadratic assignment procedure (QAP) correlation, however, only a weak correlation among followship and production activities (code, issue, and wiki contributions) was found. Survey with GitHub users revealed an ecosystem on the Internet for software developers, which includes many platforms, such as Forrst, Twitter, and Hacker News, among others. Developers make social introductions and other interactions on these platforms and engage with one anther on GitHub. Due to these preliminary findings, we describe GitHub as a part of a larger ecosystem of developer interactions.

Virtually Networked Housing Movement: Hyperlink Network Structure of Housing Social Movement Organizations

Using such theories as resource mobilization and social capital, this article examines how housing social movement organizations (SMOs) in the USA are connected through hyperlink networks. In doing so, this article employed hyperlink network analysis (HNA) through data collected from 26 national housing SMOs. Results indicate that the more bridging ties an organization has, the more central they are to the network. Results also show that the more incoming hyperlinks that a particular organization has, the more central they are to the network. These results suggest that the utilization of bridging social capital by a housing SMO has the potential to increase the ability to mobilize resources by that organization. Furthermore, increasing the number of bridging hyperlinks available on a website can improve the web presence of the SMO furthering the goals of the overall movement.

Social network analysis and the study of sociality in bats

Many bat species are known for being gregarious, forming mixed- or single-sex social groups commonly referred to as colonies. The number of studies investigating sociality in bats is rapidly increasing, with studies ranging from basic descriptions of the number of males and females within social groups to studies using social network analysis. Studies of sociality in bats are taking increasingly diverse approaches to data collection, analysis and interpretation, leaving researchers with an array of perspectives on how to conduct future research. These perspectives are difficult to synthesize, but an integrated understanding of pioneering works in this field should help researchers build upon what is already known about sociality in bats and formulate new hypotheses. Herein we provide a review of methodologies used to measure social interactions, relationships, and structure in bats. We review assumptions, sources of bias, strengths, and limitations of these methods. We emphasize that while all of the reviewed methods are well suited for assessing social interactions and relationships, each method will impact analyses of social structure and should be considered carefully. We encourage further use of social network analysis as a framework for conceptualizing, designing, and analyzing studies of bat sociality. We do not advocate any single network analysis methodology, as network analysis is continually evolving and no one technique is well suited for all research questions. Instead, we recommend several specific network measures we believe are appropriate for different types of research questions and datasets and discuss the strengths and limitations of popular analyses.

Characterizing democratic deliberation in an online forum

The use of online forums to support civic discourses on localpolitics has gained momentum, but it isnot clear whether such online conversations generate relevant outcomes for democratic decision-making. Empirical studies in online deliberation suggest that online forums often produce fragmented and unorganized public preferences when conversations occur naturally without facilitation. However, it remains unknown as to what degree an unfacilitated online forum can achieve desired quality. Here we report a detailed content analysis on local newspaper forums to reveal the patterns of progression towards the formation of public preferences in a local planning context. Towards this goal, we developed a new coding scheme that incorporates speech acts as indicators of deliberation quality and a progressive five-phase model of deliberative decision-making. Using this coding scheme, the selected newspaper forum was analyzed using a three-step procedure. Our results pinpoint portions of the observed dialogue where progress is not made towards advanced phases of deliberation due to failure to develop common ground and joint assessment of alternative courses of action.

Emerging trends in the use and adoption of e-participation around the world

This panel showcases analyses of emerging trends of e‐participation—use of information communication technologies (ICTs) and social media for political participation. E‐participation has gained popularity in many countries, and some cases have shown that e‐participation has actually brought significant changes in societies.

Insights into Housing Affordability for Rural Low-Income Families

Abstract Many nonprofits and government entities model the standard for housing affordability set by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD, which states that housing costs in excess of 30% of gross household income are unaffordable. Families require a minimum level of basic consumption after housing costs are made which must then be purchased with the remaining 70% of their gross income. Hence, an increasing number of studies have examined how these competing needs factor into the government equation for housing affordability using national datasets. This study uses data from the Rural Families Speak project, a multi-state research project focused on rural, low-income families with children. The percent of income families spent on housing is compared to their ability to fulfill basic needs to answer the question: Do low-income rural families that are not housing cost burdened perceive themselves to be able to meet more basic needs than families that are housing cost burdened according to the government standard? By incorporating measures of perceived fulfillment of basic needs, the understanding of affordability can be broadened to include the challenging circumstances of rural areas.

Understanding How GitHub Supports Curation Repositories

In recent years, software developers have started to appropriate GitHub repositories to curate resources, in order to systematically select, evaluate, and organize existing artifacts for preservation and future use. Curation behaviors in social media sites, such as users’ experiences to curate tweets from Twitter and pins on Pinterest, are well documented. However, GitHub, as a social coding platform, presents a new context for this activity, raising questions about the nature of curation on this task-driven online work site. To explore and understand curation on GitHub, we compared and contrasted curation repositories with software repositories using activity logs and analyzed the content of popular curation repositories. Our results show that: (1) curation repositories have become a favorite category of repositories in GitHub; (2) curation repositories leverage collaborative features and practices native to GitHub in new ways; (3) curation repositories collect and preserve high-quality resources for the software developers’ community. Our results suggest that curation is becoming increasingly important to the software developers’ community, and current practices can be better supported with tools designed specifically for curation.

Crystallizing Local Political Knowledge for Informed Public Participation

Municipal governments often struggle to inform and engage citizens around local issues. Due to complexities of local politics and the diverse expressions in public and private spheres, citizens face a huge information barrier towards meaningful participation. To overcome such barrier, we explore a solution to provide citizens with clear, useful, and trustworthy information. We describe a framework for accomplishing this goal through issue-based knowledge crystallization. In order to put this framework into test, we devised Community Issue Review (CIR) as a concrete process for crystallizing local political knowledge. CIR is a structured deliberative process that use a citizen panel to conduct analysis of data relevant to a pending issue. We describe CIR in three aspects of its functions: institutional design, deliberative process, and productive outcome. Three special characteristics of CIR are emphasized: (1) fully embedded within local decision-making context; (2) hybrid (face-to-face and online) deliberation; (3) facilitation on collaborative decision-analysis. We present the iterative design of the CIR process and the lessons learned from field practices in a local community.