Ars Technica’s Julian Sanchez has an interesting post on John Kelly’s recent talk at the Center for American Progress.  The “fMRI of the social mind” is one of our favorite metaphors for Morningside analysis, and it’s great to see someone run with it.  John shared the stage with Marty Kearns of Netcentric Campaigns, whose experience applying network insights to public policy advocacy is most impressive.

We are happy to welcome an exciting new player to the ‘networked public sphere,’ the first to be powered by Morningside technology. ShiftingTheDebate.com tracks how messages flow and persuasion operates in the online world. Check out the Political Video Barometer for an example of how MA insights can drive innovative ways of understanding the attentive ecosystem of networked media.

Always interesting social network guru Valdis Krebs takes a look at his Twitter network, and discovers the emergent communities therein.  We find his analysis agreeable on two levels.  First, the appreciation of informative visualizations over flashy ones is one we share.  And second, the understanding that communities are emergent formations to be discovered, not assumed a priori, is foundational to our analytic approach.

On June 13 , Morningside Chief Scientist John Kelly was a featured panelist at the Networks in Political Science conference at Harvard.  And on June 18th John will be presenting at the Qualities of Old and New Democracies conference in Budapest.

Writing in the Washington Post Rob Stein takes a refreshing look at how real world social connections affect individuals’ decisions.   We at Morningside are fond of saying that the preconceived categories (e.g. age 18-25; income between $50,000 and $75,000; “likely voter”) that drive traditional marketing and campaign management fail to take into account the impact of interpersonal and less direct social influences that inform decisions.  Our approach goes against the grain, and is often not well-received among practitioners of traditional media research.   But it works.  Thanks Rob!

Connoisseurs of international blogging will know Ethan Zuckerman’s popular Blog “My Heart’s in Accra.” Zuckerman, whose founder credits include Tripod, Geekcorps and Global Voices, is a fellow at the Berkman Center where John is applying some of our techniques to compare how bloggers of different nationalities or who write in different languages cluster differently around the world. We’re grateful to Ethan for posting a summary of John’s main presentation last month at Berkman’s Media Re:public conference at USC Annenberg School for Communication.