Social Network Analysis and Book Buying Habits
This chart is interesting. This shows book buying networks based on web-based purchasing circles, i.e., when you look at a particular book, Amazon recommends books purchased by other people who have bought that book. Amazon uses this as a marketing tool; social scientists can use this to voyeristically examine people’s bookshelfs and perhaps find correlations.
The books that might be labeled “conservative” cluster densely; the “liberal” ones cluster less densely, perhaps indicating a wider range of interest. The Bernard Lewis book I just finished sits right in the middle and spans both networks. I also have the Huntington book and Jihad vs. McWorld on my shelf. I have none of the ones on the right. What does this mean?