Human Atlas: A Tool for Mapping Social Networks

TL;DR

The paper introduces the Human Atlas, a web-based crowdsourcing tool designed to map real-world social networks efficiently, demonstrated by mapping nearly a thousand connections within the MIT Media Lab in under five hours.

Contribution

It presents a novel crowdsourcing tool for social network mapping that leverages community structure to minimize required participants.

Findings

Mapped 984 connections with 22 users in 4.6 hours

Demonstrated efficiency of crowdsourcing for social network mapping

Showed potential for community-based social network analysis

Abstract

Most social network analyses focus on online social networks. While these networks encode important aspects of our lives they fail to capture many real-world connections. Most of these connections are, in fact, public and known to the members of the community. Mapping them is a task very suitable for crowdsourcing: it is easily broken down in many simple and independent subtasks. Due to the nature of social networks -- presence of highly connected nodes and tightly knit groups -- if we allow users to map their immediate connections and the connections between them, we will need few participants to map most connections within a community. To this end, we built the Human Atlas, a web-based tool for mapping social networks. To test it, we partially mapped the social network of the MIT Media Lab. We ran a user study and invited members of the community to use the tool. In 4.6 man-hours, 22 participants mapped 984 connections within the lab, demonstrating the potential of the tool.