3 Level Networks
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Networks of networks have huge potential. They encourage the kinds of aggregation and numbers that can result in successful campaigns and policy initiatives.
They also can convene innovative projects from around the country (or world) to learn from each other, support each other and provoke each other to expand how they think about what they are working on.
Transformation or system shifting requires networks to be involved in networks of networks. This diagram and activity is designed to help networks develop networks of networks to maximize their impact.
CLICK HERE to access the 3 Level Networks download.
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Weaving the Weavers : Efforts to co-create global learning and peer assist
[ap_spacing spacing_height="20px"]Let´s be honest Network Weaving is super fascinating. There are so many activities that we, network weavers, can contribute to to make communities vibrant and effective. Surely, you have your own story and connection to what got you into network weaving. We can seize modern technologies to connect and and share these stories and our learnings.
There is a Facebook group called Network Weaving that currently has about 1800 members. There already has been a vivid exchange of resources and learning through posts and comments. At the beginning of this year some members began further deepening the potential of this amazing community. There are efforts to build a network map and the establishment of regular online formats. In this blog post I will give a short overview of what has been happening so far and how you may participate in the journey.
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Purpose and Needs
Both the mapping efforts and the virtual cafe identified the needs in the community. Both groups found similar themes and purposes, which cover:
- To help the community discover its identities, building trust-based relationships, and encouraging/facilitating collaborations and learning.
- To further build the field of network weaving, understand its potential and role in systemic change.
- To deepen information flows, to connect related capacities and to attract more abundance to our work.
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What has been happening
The network mapping journey
The journey to create a useful network map is highly participative and members of the network weavers facebook group are encouraged to join in any step of the process that is the right fit for them. There are three distinct phases that we are working through; First, we are taking the time to envision and get a better sense of what the community wants, needs and values. Once we have that clarity we’ll move into a technical phase where we’ll build the map. Finally, we’ll work together to make sense of what we are seeing in that map. We kicked off the envisioning phase with twenty seven members of the Facebook group in a zoom session with the larger group having been invited to contribute their perspective in a survey.[ap_spacing spacing_height="10px"]
The Master Mappers have extensive experience with network mapping. Christine Capra, Sarah Ann Shanahan, Maya Townsend, Lisa Negstad, Jim Best and Drew Mackie serve with their efforts and knowledge to facilitate learning, increase the awareness regarding passions and relationships within our community, and to develop the mapping skills of network weavers. This is the process of the mapping and as you see you can work closer with the Master Mappers, fill in surveys and attend the convenings.
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Next Meeting on the 2nd April 9:00 -10:30 a.m. CT
Register at:
https://zoom.us/meeting/register/3e12488a815da90c8c34be5db4a05ad8
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The Virtual Cafes, hosted by an open group of facilitators each month, aim to intensify learning, peer assistance and our service to systemic changes. There have been two cafes so far and the next one is coming up at the 4th of April. The hosts are currently Tim Strasser, Nenad Maljković, Ben Roberts, Jim Best, Keala Young and Adrian Röbke. The hosting group is open. Whomever wants to contribute is very welcome! In the last cafe on the 7th of March we explored our learning wishes and already dove into some of them in an open space, which is one of the many interactive formats we will use to have fun. These wishes to which you can add anytime are a basis for further explorations and journeys.
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Event Link: https://www.facebook.com/events/248389826079525/?event_time_id=248389829412858
So this is about it. Personally, I feel lots of excitement and curiosity about what we can co-create as a global community. After just three gatherings I have made lots of good connections and I am sure that really cool ideas will emerge when we get together! Looking forward to seeing and hearing you soon!
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Adrian Röbke
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Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash
Closing Triangles
Today's free resource is a diagram showing how to close triangles that you can print out and share with your network so they learn this basic network weaving skill. One of the simplest - and most powerful - ways to weave a network is by closing triangles.
Often the first step is when someone you know comes to you with a need or interest. Or you meet someone new and ask questions to find out their needs, interests and skills. You then think about people you know who could help this person with their need, have an interest in common, or who could benefit from the skills of this new acquaintance.
For example, you might know a senior who wants to learn new tech skills, such as using zoom or google docs and you also know a college student who wants to practice showing people how to use technology.
The next step is to bring the two people together. It's great if you can be part of the introduction and can set up a time for the two to meet, perhaps at a local coffee shop or community center. During the conversation, you might ask each to share a little about themselves and have each talk about their interest in technology. They will generally move to how they can help each other quite naturally. You might want to help them set up a second time to meet if that is appropriate.
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Your goal, however, is for them to continue their relationship without you being in the middle (hence the dotted lines in the diagram). this way you have time to close many more triangles in your networks!
We'd love to hear in the comments any ways that you use the closing triangles diagram
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Peer Assist Process
This peer assist process is great as a stand alone session or can be part of a community of practice.
It is useful when a group or project has a challenge and needs some fresh thinking. We find that the helping behavior of this process helps build trust.
You probably want at least 5 people as part of the assisting group. You don’t want many more than 12 or you will need to change the process, limiting the advice and the go-round at the end.
The Power of Networks
If you’re like most nonprofit leaders, you’re devoting significant effort to your networks. But what return are you seeing on that investment?
I recently spoke with 500+ nonprofit leaders at Nonprofit Driven 2018 and emphasized 3 simple truths about strong, impactful networks.
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1. Network leadership is different from organizational leadership.
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Organizations tend to have strong, stable structures and centralized decision-making. Leaders prioritize goal achievement, alignment and retention.
Networks are loose, unstructured webs of relationships. People are engaged in autonomous yet connected activities to achieve a shared purpose. Activities are emergent and often undefined; people come together when there is energy and opportunity. Network leaders have to be humble co-leaders that lift their gaze above individual organizations to see a greater purpose.
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2. Networks are grounded in trusting relationships.
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The success or failure of networks can usually be traced to the condition of their relationships. Like any relationship, trust is key. Easy to say, but how do you do it?
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I. Visualizing your network can offer powerful insights.
Network mapping can be a powerful trust building process, especially when you engage network members in making sense of it together. Seeing the system of relationships can illuminate barriers and opportunities to build equity and trust.
In some networks, one person (the hub) knows many individuals who aren’t connected to each other (spokes). This can limit and potentially block the flow of information and resources.
II. Closing triangles.
Hubs need to “close the triangles” – build relationships between disconnected people. Closing triangles is a key strategy for weaving ecosystems of trust in which:
• People are meaningfully engaged
• There aren’t gatekeepers
• Diverse perspectives can be fully integrated, and
• Leadership is shared.
III. Set the table for inclusion.
How you set up a room, design an agenda and facilitate a dialogue can either limit or build engagement and inclusion. I recommend Liberating Structures, a set of creative yet systematic facilitation tools that leverage everyone’s contributions.
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3. Networks enable community building and social impact.
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To make a social impact, networks also need to take collective action. Here are four essential practices:
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I. Foster shared purpose.
Shared purpose sustains momentum. Prioritize the purpose and align your strategy to realize it.
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II. Foster co-creation.
Mechanisms like Liberating Structures and purpose-driven working groups enable co-creation and build shared ownership.
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III. Foster collaborative leadership.
Shared power is key in networks. Regularly analyze how the network is functioning, close the triangles and guide the work together.
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IV. Foster generative learning.
Make space to reflect and gather the collective wisdom. Nurture a culture of curiosity and develop agility through learning.
Have you unleashed the power of your networks? Integrating these 3 simple truths and a few proven practices can help make your networks effective and impactful.
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Lisa Watson is the Co-Founder & CEO of Openly, a strategy, research and design firm enabling changemakers to achieve social impact. She is also a faculty member at the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity.
Originally Published on November 8, 2018 at Hilborn: Charity eNews
[ap_spacing spacing_height="15px"]We encourage you to comment on this post so we can hear about your thoughts and experience.
A Network Connector Story
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First, An Introduction [ap_spacing spacing_height="25px"]
For a long time, we've trained our eyes to see things with edges and boundaries: organizations, countries, selves. Things with edges and boundaries feel manageable and solid. [ap_spacing spacing_height="10px"]
But the world is changing at an alarming rate, and the old ways of seeing are not quite up to the vertigo of a fast-paced universe. We need new ways of understanding our world that take into account new possibilities. [ap_spacing spacing_height="10px"]
So, we start noticing networks –the relationships among people and the patterns those relationships create. Increasingly, we are realizing that it’s through networks that things get done. People go outside teams, organizations, and even countries to connect with those who can help them succeed. And, using social media, we can now collaborate and engage as easily with people around the globe as we can with people in our hometown. [ap_spacing spacing_height="10px"]
We soon start to notice that all networks aren’t the same. Certain patterns in networks, such as a hub and spoke, are great when you want control. But when you need lots of innovation and aren’t at all sure what will work, bringing together people from different networks who have different perspectives and backgrounds can generate transformative experimentation. [ap_spacing spacing_height="10px"]
But bringing together people effectively is not easy. It requires a whole set of new skills embodied in a new role we call a Network Weaver. A Network Weaver is someone who is aware of the networks around them and explicitly works to make them healthier (more inclusive, bridging divides). Network Weavers do this by connecting people strategically where there's potential for mutual benefit, helping people identify and join with others around their passions, and serving as a catalyst for self-organizing groups. [ap_spacing spacing_height="40px"]
A Tale of Network Connecting [ap_spacing spacing_height="20px"]
Nestled in the Appalachian foothills of southeastern Ohio is the ACEnet Food Ventures Center, a kitchen incubator where people can rent the use of equipment to process specialty food products. The goal of the Center is to help as many people as possible start local food businesses, even if they have very little money (as is the case for many people in this region). [ap_spacing spacing_height="10px"]
From the start, ACEnet staff knew they did not have the resources to provide entrepreneurs with the assistance they needed to be successful, so they developed another strategy. They spent much of their time strategically connecting entrepreneurs with each other. Here’s a typical scenario. [ap_spacing spacing_height="10px"]
It was a blue-sky October afternoon in 1995, and Bill –network weaver extraordinaire –was standing on the loading deck of the newly completed kitchen Incubator where start-up entrepreneurs came to make their specialty food products. Craig, from Frog Ranch Salsa, was loading cases of his award-winning product into his truck and grousing about the high cost of jars. [ap_spacing spacing_height="10px"]
Right then, another truck pulled up to the dock, and Betty – one of the owners of another salsa producer – hopped out and started unloading cases of empty jars that would be filled later that day. Bill immediately introduced Craig to Betty, encouraging them to compare notes about the quality of tomatoes that season and local bands that were playing in town that weekend. [ap_spacing spacing_height="10px"]
Network Weavers are continually making connections between people –but they are always connecting strategically. They point out commonalities that create a foundation for mutual benefit. They also help people figure out if they have the kind of personal and emotional connection that will enable them to do things together. [ap_spacing spacing_height="10px"]
The two were now laughing and joking, so Bill introduced an opportunity. They both used the same jar for their salsa. Couldn’t they order jars together and significantly lower the price? Craig and Betty both thought this idea had some real potential, so Bill helped them figure out how it might work. [ap_spacing spacing_height="10px"]
Network Weavers help people self-organize. They start with twosies –fairly simple activities that benefit both individuals. They coach rather than run the show. As a result, the two individuals are more thrivable: together they have freed up more money for their businesses and they now have a set of collaboration skills that can be used in many other situations. [ap_spacing spacing_height="10px"]
The first order worked out without a hitch. The next time Bill saw Betty, he suggested that they might want to include several other businesses who used the same size jars in the next order so they could lower the price even more. Soon the joint orders filled an 18-wheeler and the cost of the jars was one-third the cost they had paid when they ordered singly. Now they got it: they could come up with all kinds of ways that they could improve their business and the community, find others to join them and make something happen. In the next few years, the people involved in the jar orders became Network Weavers themselves and, with many others, organized two different festivals, a regional brand, a loan fund, a food policy council, an innovation fund and many more collaborations. [ap_spacing spacing_height="10px"]
Through modeling and coaching, Network Weaving encourages people to act their way into a new way of being. Network Weaving increases thrivability both for individuals and their communities as people gain the framework, skills, and processes they need to co-create wonderful communities. [ap_spacing spacing_height="10px"]
When people take on the role of Network Weaver, they take responsibility for working with others to create healthier networks. [ap_spacing spacing_height="20px"]
We encourage you to comment on this post so we can hear about your thoughts and experience.
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Communities of Practice for Network Weavers
The most effective way for people to build their skills as Network Weavers is to set up a Community of Practice –a group of people who share an interest in developing skills in a particular area. [ap_spacing spacing_height="10px"]
A Community of Practice encourages people to identify their learning needs and organize training, coaching, and peer support to meet those needs.
Participation in a Community of Practice is voluntary: we find that usually those eager and natural Network Weavers form a core group, but as they employ network weaving in their work, others see the benefits and become interested in building their skills as well and become more active.
A successful Network Weaver Community of Practice begins initially with some external training, since there are few highly skilled Network Weavers at this point. It’s usually effective to have a small core group of natural Network Weavers work with the trainer so that they quickly are able to conduct much of the training themselves.
Those individuals might have extra sessions to read and discuss resources that could deepen their understanding of networks and self-organizing so they are working from a strong theoretical base. The external trainer(s) could then focus on coaching this core group.[ap_spacing spacing_height="20px"]
Peer Assist
A core practice of a Community of Practice is the peer assist. This is where one individual, project group, or network has a challenge and seeks the thinking and advice of others in the Community of Practice. [ap_spacing spacing_height="10px"]
THE PROCESS IS:[ap_spacing spacing_height="5px"]
- The individual or group presents their situation and the challenge it is facing.[ap_spacing spacing_height="10px"]
- Those listening then ask clarifying questions which are answered.[ap_spacing spacing_height="10px"]
- Those listening then provide ideas, questions, and suggestions; they suggest sources of information or other cases that may help the challenge group.[ap_spacing spacing_height="10px"]
- The challenge group then responds.[ap_spacing spacing_height="10px"]
- The listeners talk about how this gave them ideas for their own network or project.[ap_spacing spacing_height="10px"]
- The entire group reflects on the session and insights gained.[ap_spacing spacing_height="10px"]
- The group determines whether there are any next steps or whether they want to continue the discussion in any way.
A peer assist can be 30-60 minutes long.
Here are some comments about the benefits of peer assists from participants in a recent Community of Practice:
“It was great to show my network how to build trust among our volunteers who are spread out statewide and may not have ever even met each other.”
“From my peer assist I took away the concept of planning in chunks --giving network participants a broad learning trajectory but doing detailed planning in small chunks in order to leave space for addressing emergent interests / needs.”
“I gained good ideas from my colleagues of ways to approach networks and a variety of traditional and social media tools to incorporate to enrich the experience for the entire network.”
“It gave me a better view/perspective on how other networks apply network weaving within their own agencies. I was also able to get additional resources and information how to better address the issues that arise from our network. I also love the personal stories and the friendships forged from the exercise.” [ap_spacing spacing_height="20px"]
Learning Popup
Another activity, called a learning popup, supports on learning about a specific topic. An individual identifies something that he or she wants to learn and invites others to join in a learning popup. They may need to bring in an expert, or one of the participants may have advanced knowledge in the area. The group meets, determines a learning agenda and sets up one or more sessions to complete this agenda.
It’s very easy to hold Communities of Practice on zoom.us, an easy-to-use video conferencing platform.
For further learning, see Abby Yanow's post on Best Practices for Communities of Practice.
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We encourage you to comment on this post so we can hear about your thoughts and experience.
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Trust: Foundation of Effective Networks
This article is a chapter from the Network Weaver Handbook with several worksheets you can use with your networks, projects and organizations.
They go together nicely with the blog posts Trust in Networks is Fundamental to Social Change by Christine Capra and Trust in Networks by June Holley.
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Network Weaver Free Resources Package
Each week, we add a new free item to our store.
This week we are offering: Network Weaver FREE RESOURCES PACKAGE.
ALL of the free resources currently available at the Network Weaver Resource Page in one complete downloadable file.
Conversations in Networks
In early September I started collecting #MeToo tweets and stumbled into a big-data look at #MeToo and the Kavanaugh confirmation. As I posted previously, the Twitter network is radically split into red and blue factions. (FiveThirtyEight subsequently wrote about this divide, based not on Twitter but on polls, and arrived at the same conclusion.) Now I want to post an update on this project, which is more than ever a work in progress. I’m especially wanting input from #MeToo movement organizers, who hopefully have real questions that can guide where this research goes next.
I am still collecting tweets. Here is an updated map, showing the same left-right split. The network appears to have a couple significant bridges and a “super-left” tail:
We know it’s been a momentous few weeks for #MeToo. Let’s look at the data. See how #MeToo tweeting spiked over 100,000 per hour on Sept 27, the day of Ford’s testimony.
What tweets exactly are being counted? Over Sept 15-27 I curated a list of hashtags to track, aiming to capture #MeToo spirit without taking unnecessary Kavanaugh crossfire. During that time, #BelieveSurvivors grew from zero to the number one trending hashtag on Twitter of Sept 24. My final list of 20 “#MeToo hashtags” also includes #WhyIDidntReport, #BelieveWomen, #MenToo, #MeTooMvmt, #SurvivorCulture, and #HimToo. Below is a word cloud showing all the top hashtags from the 5 million tweets charted above.
All these maps and charts are a nice start, but how can we better understand what’s happening on the two sides of this “conversation”? One way is to make separate word clouds, one for each side:
We can see some important differences based on these word clouds, like #HimToo on the right and #WhyIDidntReport on the left. But the differences are obscured by the overwhelming similarities. For example, barely a day after #BelieveSurvivors exploded on the left, it became just as huge on the right, and so both word clouds feature this hashtag prominently, which does not help us understand the differences between left and right.
Let’s look at this problem another way. We’ve got 5 million Tweets from 1.5 million users. Based on network clusters, we can categorize many (maybe most) of those users as “left” or “right.” What happens if we make one bucket of tweets from known “left” users, another bucket of tweets from known “right” users, and then teach a computer program to recognize the difference between a “left” tweet and a “right” tweet? If we succeed, then we can use that computer program to score any #MeToo tweet on left-vs-right partisanship, including tweets from unknown users and without even drawing a network map.
We have formulated a classic problem of machine learning. Skipping some technical detail, we train a classifier to recognize our two categories of #MeToo tweets with roughly 87% accuracy. Not bad. If we crack open the resulting classifier, we find model coefficients that tell us exactly which words are most strongly associated with each side of the #MeToo divide. The bigger the bar, the more influence it has on our “prediction”:
The words listed above do not have any extraneous hashtags that are popular on both sides. We are looking at the most significant single-word indicators that a tweet is either “left” or “right.” The top two and bottom two make perfect sense. The left champions #SurvivorCulture and #StopKavanaugh. The right champions #HimToo (a cry to protect men from false accusations) and #ConfirmKavanaughNow. Some words included in the list are not obviously partisan (#world) and we’d want to do more model-training if we were really serious about classifying lots of future tweets very accurately.
Let’s run with our first-draft model for now. With it, we can actually compute, for any #MeToo tweet, the probability that it’s left or right. If a tweet scores 0.0001, then it’s almost certainly left, and it it scores 0.9999 then it’s almost certainly right. If we can score tweets this way, then we can aggregate tweet scores user by user and estimate how far each individual leans left or right (on a zero-to-one scale), based on what they’re literally saying and without having to bother with a map. Below we see a curve of tweet scores based on Sept 25-27.
The rainbow in the chart above shows how we assign a color to each score value from zero to one. This will be handy when we start assigning scores to nodes and edges in network maps.
Based on the distribution above, let’s consider a more nuanced classification than the binary “left” vs “right.” I’ve proposed four categories, and selected 2-3 of the most-retweeted examples within each category. It looks good at the far ends, with a miss or two in the mid-left and mid-right.
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Far Left: ~500K tweets scoring 0.0-0.15:
"i was raped at Yale. i was groped at parties in dke’s house—#kavanaugh’s fraternity at yale—and was told as a freshman to avoid their “rape basement.” multiple dear friends were raped by yale dke brothers & by boys from elite prep schools. i believe ramirez. #believesurvivors"
"by scheduling a vote on judge kavanaugh before dr. ford has even testified, senate republican leaders are saying loud and clear: they don’t care what she says. #believesurvivors"
"mr. president, enough. a supreme court nomination is not worth more than the lives of survivors. there must be a full investigation of these allegations of criminal behavior, and judge kavanaugh’s nomination must be withdrawn."
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Mid Left: ~300K tweets scoring 0.15-0.35
"ladies, a question for you: “what would you do if all men had a 9pm curfew?” dudes: read the replies and pay attention. #metoo #kavanaugh #cosby #feminism #maleprivilege #privilege"
"tune in as democrats show our support for dr. christine blasey ford. #believesurvivors"
"so, the same party that wants to force teenage boys and girls to shower together in the name of transgender rights is also leading #metoo against sexual predators?"
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Mid-Right: ~200K tweets scoring 0.35-0.75
"modern feminism has never been about equality with men.
it has always been about special treatment and exemption from all responsibility. many condemned me for being one of the first to speaking out against #metoo. now it’s toxicity is on full display. #defendourboys"
"you can like or not like @michaelavenatti but what he just put out is a sworn affidavit alleging that kavanaugh and mark judge regularly gang raped women including once his client julie swetnick. i believe survivors."
"it’s all about #metoo & #webelievesurvivors unless the survivors support @realdonaldtrump or the sexual predator is a democrat. ain’t that right @keithellison @maziehirono @senfeinstein & @billclinton @dnc the party of hypocrisy
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Far Right: 100K tweets scoring 0.75-1.0
"i’m loving the hashtag #himtoo. it appears to be a movement built of men who have had their lives and families destroyed by false allegations and a lack of due process. radical feminism has become problematic and needs to be addressed. dr. luke, brett kavanaugh… #himtoo"
"serious question. are keith ellison, sen. sherrod brown, sen. booker and sen. tom carper signing on? i know they’re democrats but thought it’s only fair to ask given their history’s on this subject."
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COMING SOON…
With a good scoring and coloring system, along the lines described above, we can apply those colors to every node and edge of a twitter map, and see “exactly” where left- and right-leaning discussions are happening, along with some shades in between the extremes. Something like this:
Prototype #MeToo Twitter network map,
With color spectrum to indicate extent of left vs right expression.
Let me know what you think. I am especially interested in movement organizer folks who have suggestions for improving the relevance and usefulness of this method to provide them with actionable information.
Originally published 10/9/18 at Connective Associates.