Improving social capital: a social network monitoring system

Abstract

To increase communication and collaboration opportunities, members of a community must be aware of the social networks that exist within that community. This paper describes a social network monitoring system that enables users to register their interactions and visualize their social networks. The system was implemented in two distributed learning communities and the results have shown that this system facilitates collecting information about social interactions. Furthermore, the visualization of the social networks, given as feedback, appeared to have a positive impact on users, augmenting their social network awareness.