Using Key Player Analysis as a Method for Examining the Role of Community Animators in Technology Adoption

TL;DR

This study introduces a method using key player analysis and social network metrics to identify community animators who influence technology adoption, demonstrated through data from a mobile app at a local arts festival.

Contribution

It proposes a novel approach to quantify and identify community animators in technology adoption using social network analysis and graph invariants.

Findings

Community animators can be identified through key player analysis.

Early adopters and initiating developers serve as community animators.

Network fragmentation correlates with the influence of key players.

Abstract

This paper examines the role of community animators in technology adoption. Community animators are individuals that actively build social networks and broker ties between nodes in those networks. The present study observes technology adoption patterns through data collected from a mobile application at a local arts festival. A social network was constructed through photo-sharing and interaction within the app. Given this data, we propose the use of key player analysis to identify community animators. In addition, we use a graph invariant (i.e., fragmentation in the network) to describe the role and impact of key players on the full network of interactions. Our results contribute to literature on technology adoption in usability studies by proposing a method to quantify and identify the theoretical concept of community animators. We further analyze the types of community animators to be found in early adoption of technology: the early adopters themselves, and the initiating developers.