Stigmergy and Collaboration: Tracing the Contingencies of Mediated Interaction

Social network analysis is primarily based in the investigation of ties between nodes and the groups that those ties form. Computer-mediated interaction has introduced many unique forms of tie data to the field. The form of data used in this research are traces of activity left when people create and edit digital artifacts, and when navigating around hyperlinked environments. Using intentional and unintentional traces of activity to generate social graphs provides a unique window into collaboration and interaction. This paper elaborates a technique that uses event log data to trace contingencies in user activity and generate directed two-mode graphs, associograms, which can then be abstracted to sociogram representations. The social network ties generated represent connections between people based on actions contingent on one another. These ties can be used to represent potential social connections for collaboration, social collectives for coordination, and stigmergic self-organization.