3.6-times as many former congressional staffers turned health care lobbyists and their immediate connections have network ties closer to former President Bush, than to current President Obama.
The connections in the network map shown below, and used for the analysis above, include people and organizations (e.g. corporate, not-for-profit, public, etc.) the people have been identified with.
Other trivia: Continue reading “Health Care Leans Republican”
Thanks to ProPublica and Sunlight Foundation:
…for the first time digitized one year’s worth of FARA records, making them accessible in a searchable database that allows users to easily follow the money and connect the dots. With the Foreign Lobbying Influence Tracker , anyone can quickly learn what governments are lobbying whom, how often and about what. [source @ ProPublica]
Here are the firms the Congressmen and -women from my home state have been meeting with:
and the countries of the governmental department or foreign firm paying the lobbyists:
While not networking exactly, this does touch on our predilection to believe others we do not know, if there are enough of them.
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has settled with a plastic surgery company, alleging the firm published phony positive testimonials and Web sites. Lifestyle Lift, associated with Michigan-based Scientific Image Center Management, agreed to pay $300,000 to New York State and stop posting false endorsements of its facial cosmetic surgery services.
I wonder how long until marketers create entire networks of fake people to promote products. Anyone seen this on Facebook, Myspace, or anywhere?
I wanted to put out what’s been done so far on making yesterday’s post more interactive. There’s an awful lot that could be better about this map. Particularly legibility of labels in the core (it’s just too dense). If you want to see names, I suggest looking at the edges of the map.
Michael Bommarito is looking into better layouts for legibility. And while you are waiting, I suggest getting your fill of everything he’s ever written.
The data was collected from OpenSecrets.org.
[21-Apr-2009: You should see a flash image above, but am having an awful time getting this to render on a Mac. Works great on Linux (Red Hat Enterprise Linux).]
OpenSecrets.org is offering free access to their collected data about political contributions, and in that vein, I’ve created a network of expenditures by 527’s*. I am looking for a way to make this more detailed for your ease of exploration, so please stay tuned.
*Groups whose primary purpose is to influence elections are exempt from taxation under Section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code. From NP Action.
Friendship, it seems, is more accurately demonstrated than described. We usually don’t do a good job accurately reporting our friendships when questioned. So, here’s a look at a slightly higher measurement of friendship: conversations.
If you squint (or click to enlarge the image) you can find a little yellow dot. That’s me. The connections between dots are conversations that take place within my “hearing” on twitter. With research suggesting people as far as three degrees away from you hold a statistically significant level of influence across varied subjects; don’t you wonder who is influencing you?
I’ve discussed my thoughts on authority before and I think follower count is a poor measure; but Stowe Boyd as has a great post (where the name for this post came from) summing up much of the controversy.
Two things I particularly like about the post: his spelling out why follower count is not without merit as a measure, and his unshy conviction that influence is a good thing.
To these I’ll add one short thought and one quote. Follower count, for all of its failings is the single measure we can all agree on. That alone is powerful. As for influence:
It is the pressure of our peers, after all, that gives us the support to try things we otherwise wouldn’t have. — BILL TREASURER, Right Risk
A very happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year to you and your social network. Keep connecting.
The real questions are: whom do we trust, why, and under what conditions is trust transferable?
Chris Brogran asks: How does the web define authority?
First is an important matter of language. There is a large difference between authority and an authority. Authority is power formally granted by a position or role. An authority is some who has power or influence; it’s a matter of trust by others for a given context. E.g. I trust my doctor to diagnose an illness, but have no reason to trust him on gardening.
There are many reasons we (dis-) trust others, including: shared opinions; length, frequency, and consistency of interactions; and how our peers feel about the individual the given context. These are all correlated, but frequency and peer opinion have the biggest impact on transferability of trust.
How use doth breed a habit in a man! — William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona
Frequency can be no surprise, it’s the underpinning of blanket marketing. Familiarity bred through repetition. Ever wonder why you stop on a TV show you dislike while flipping through the channels? Of course, that could be me making excuses for lousy taste.
Peer consideration is the tricky bit. There is a lot of research going into this, but there are some great seminal works that are written for non-academics covering the spread of innovation and adoption of scientific principles.
When our peers already have some experience or opinion on a topic or an authority, then our own opinions are strongly colored by these existing opinions. In fact, as odd as it may sound, given a pattern of relationships where the opinion of all but one individual is known, we can predictably estimate both what the opinion is, and how strong the opinion is, of the unknown person.
But how about when we something brand new to us and our peers? Frequency plays a big role here too. If lots of people, even people we know nothing about, say XYZ is a good idea, we’re likely to give it the benefit of the doubt, trusting the wisdom of the crowd.
So, strictly speaking, is (dis-) trust transferable? Depends. If trust already exists in our network of peers, yes, and predictably so. If the context is brand new to you and your peers, there is no trust to transfer, but we use frequency as a proxy in our decisions.
So what does this all mean? Let’s look at an example: you’re trying to decide whether you agree (trust) what I have written.
I am new to writing about this, and I’m not particularly active in social media, so chances are we don’t have peers in common. You can google for what others have said about me, but you’re not going to find much relevant to trusting me in this context. Ultimately, because I don’t have a track record (frequency & consistency) for participation (peers) in this context, I am at the mercy of how similar our outlooks are, and any opinions that may develop in comments.