***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org ***** howdy, i am a political scientist and merely a consumer of the SOCNET discussions, which i enjoy and learn from. over the past week, i was struck by lack of response to barry wellman's post regarding the absence of a discussion about the recent revelations concerning the NSA ("puzzling omissions," 6/14). indeed, this dearth was thrown into even greater relief by the impressive buzz regarding attribution for achievements in network analysis and the veracity of information on wikipedia. while most of us are rarely trained in the normative and ethical implications of our pursuit of normal science, it seems to me that pondering the social, political, and economic ethical implications of the science we do is an important exercise, even if it is difficult and often inconclusive. political science certainly has a long history (even preceding its modern incarnation) rife with examples of theories not used for "good", or well-intentioned efforts to implement theories for the good that go awry. the post-WWII qualms of hard scientists wrestling with the implications of their creations is also notable, and helped motivate the field of peace science. yet, even peace science is cut through with a normative tension: if one is a peace scientist, can one do research demonstrating how to win wars that may in turn be used by governments? i simply wonder what scientists of social networks think about these normative issues in their general form, rather than as an indictment of a specific government policy, the NSA, and so forth. perhaps it is simply better to address the negative implications of network analysis in fora other than science (e.g., politics), to forge ahead confident that when the chips fall where they may, good outcomes will exceed the bad? regards, andrew On 6/14/2013 8:09 AM, Barry Wellman wrote: > ***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org ***** > > I am flabbergasted that there has been no discussion on this list -- > or even announcement -- of the NSA's use of social network analysis to > do massive surveillance of American and unAmerican populations. > > Nor any talk of the Turkish situation -- seems to fit Chuck Tilly's > network-basis analyses of collective political behaviour. > > Barry Wellman > _______________________________________________________________________ > > S.D. Clark Professor FRSC NetLab Director > Faculty of Information (iSchool) 611 Bissell Building > 140 St. George St. University of Toronto Toronto Canada M5S 3G6 > http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman twitter: @barrywellman > > NETWORKED:The New Social Operating System. Lee Rainie & Barry Wellman > MIT Press http://amzn.to/zXZg39 Print $22 Kindle $16 > Old/NewCyberTimes http://bit.ly/c8N9V8 > ________________________________________________________________________ > > _____________________________________________________________________ > SOCNET is a service of INSNA, the professional association for social > network researchers (http://www.insna.org). To unsubscribe, send > an email message to [log in to unmask] containing the line > UNSUBSCRIBE SOCNET in the body of the message. > _____________________________________________________________________ SOCNET is a service of INSNA, the professional association for social network researchers (http://www.insna.org). To unsubscribe, send an email message to [log in to unmask] containing the line UNSUBSCRIBE SOCNET in the body of the message.