Matthew J. Salganik

MATTHEW J. SALGANIK

145 Wallace Hall
Department of Sociology
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544


mjs3@princeton.edu http://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/ Tel: 609-258-8867
Fax: 609-258-2180


HOW DO SOCIETAL PATTERNS EMERGE FROM THE ACTION AND INTERACTION OF INDIVIDUALS?

The success and failure of cultural products is mysterious. Best-selling books, blockbuster movies, and hit songs are much more successful than other products suggesting that these "superstars" are somehow special. Yet, despite these apparent differences, predicting which particular product will become the next-big-thing appears to be almost impossible. For example, the first Harry Potter book, which went on to become tremendously successful, was initially rejected by eight different publishers. In my dissertation I addressed this puzzling nature of success in a series of 4 web-based experiments involving more than 27,000 people. By creating a website where people could listen to and download new music, and more importantly where we could control the information that people had about the behavior of others, it was possible to experimentally explore the role of social influence in the creation of fads and thereby better understand success and failure in cultural markets.

Much of my other research involves social networks: describing their structure, understanding their consequences, and designing procedures to collect such information. For example, I continue to develop respondent-driven sampling, a network-based statistical method for the study of hidden populations that is currently being used by the Center for Disease Control in a study of drug injectors in 25 U.S. cities. Another project involves the development of new methods for the estimation of weak tie volume. In the future, I plan to integrate my research on social networks with my research on the sociology of culture and to explore creative uses of the Internet in social research.

CURRICULUM VITA (pdf)

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:

Salganik, Matthew J., Peter S. Dodds, and Duncan J. Watts. 2006. ``Experimental study of inequality and unpredictability in an artificial cultural market.'' Science, 311:854-856.

Zheng, Tian, Matthew J. Salganik, and Andrew Gelman. 2006. ``How many people do you know in prison?: Using overdispersion in count data to estimate social structure in networks.'' Journal of the American Statistical Association, 101:409-423.

Salganik, Matthew J. 2006. ``Confidence intervals, design effects, and sample size calculation for respondent-driven sampling.'' Journal of Urban Health, 83:98-111.

Salganik, Matthew J. and Douglas D. Heckathorn. 2004. ``Sampling and estimation in hidden populations using respondent-driven sampling.'' Sociological Methodology, 34:193-239.

FACULTY

ELIZABETH M. ARMSTRONG
DELIA BALDASSARRI
MIGUEL CENTENO
PAUL DI MAGGIO
MITCHELL DUNEIER
THOMAS J. ESPENSHADE
PATRICIA FERNANDEZ-KELLY
ANGEL L. HARRIS
SCOTT M. LYNCH
DOUGLAS S. MASSEY
SARA MCLANAHAN
KATHERINE S. NEWMAN
DEVAH PAGER
ALEJANDRO PORTES
GEORGES RENIERS
GILBERT ROZMAN
MARTIN RUEF
MATTHEW J. SALGANIK
KIM LANE SCHEPPELE
PAUL STARR
EDWARD TELLES
MARTA TIENDA
ROBERT WUTHNOW
KING-TO YEUNG
VIVIANA A. ZELIZER

FACULTY LIBRARY

EMERITUS FACULTY

MARVIN BRESSLER
SUZANNE KELLER
HOWARD TAYLOR
WALTER WALLACE CHARLES WESTOFF

LECTURERS

AMIN GHAZIANI
MISCHA GABOWITSCH
ANA MARIA GOLDANI
DEBORAH KAPLE