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It has been two years since I was involved in social network mapping professionally but that doesn’t mean I’ve lost interest – I keep seeing interesting applications of these approaches as network mapping techniques continue to make the jump into all kinds of academic disciplines. The latest: The Remarkable Properties of Mythological Social Networks.

Basically – the social networks in The Odyssey (Homer, obv) are remarkably similar to real-life modern social networks, which is evidence that the epic poem is in fact based to some extent on real events and real people. Cool.

With all the discussion about the NSA and other organizations’ surveillance of online sources it’s important to understand what people are writing about. In fact, one of the chief complaints about journalistic coverage so far is that journalists seem to be getting the story more wrong than right – whether this is due to a fundamental lack of comprehension of the subject matter or for more wilful reasons is tough to assess.

Anyhow… earlier this month Kieran Healy published a super-interesting intro to “Metadata Analysis” – i.e., the analysis not of messages’ contents, but information about the messages: Using Metadata to find Paul Revere.