Knowledge on the social web presupposes to gather information about its current and potential users and document their relationships, interests and needs. A recent branch of sociology, the Actor-Network Theory or ANT, states that relations among human and nonhuman actors are equally important to comprehend social phenomena. Since scientists are potential users of huge computational support, their communities provide relevant cases for domain characterization and software design. This paper investigates the possibilities of using ANT to characterize a real instance of those social networks. The active role of nonhuman actors allows us to trace the relations based on material clues left behind by the actors, and also to bring forth features to be explored by social software. The results of this study present a graphical representation that allows quantitative and qualitative analysis of the social network, which may inform a better design of systems for those communities. © 2012 IEEE. 8792MIR LabsAndrade, A.D., Urquhart, C., The affordances of actor network theory in ICT for development research (2010) Information Technology & People, 23 (4). , Emerald InsightBae, J., Kim, S., A global social graph as a hybrid hipergraph (2009) Fifth IEEE International Joint Conference on INC, IMS and IDCBalbino, F.C., Anacleto, J.C., (2011) Contagious: Um Framework Para Suporte À Difusão de Inovações em Sites de Redes Sociais, , Workshop sobre Aspectos da Interação Humano-Computador para a Web SocialBrandes, U., A faster algorithm for betweenness centrality (2001) Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 25, p. 2Callon, M., Some elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay (1986) Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge, , John Law (ed.)Callon, M., Réseaux technico-économiques et irré versibilités (1991) Les Figures de L'irreversibilite en Economie. Sous la Direction de Robert Boyer, , Bernard Chavance, Olivier Godard. Paris: EHESSDigiampietri, L.A., Da Silva, E.E., A framework for a social network of researchers analysis (2011) Iberoamerican Journal of Applied Computing, 1 (1). , August/2011Durkheim, E., (2007) As Regras Do Método Sociológico, , Ed. Martins FontesEades, P., A heuristic for graph drawing (1984) Congressus Numerantium, 42, pp. 149-160Floyd, R.W., Algorithm 97: Shortest path (1962) Communications of the ACM, 5 (6), p. 345Freeman, L., A set of measures of centrality based upon betweenness (1977) Sociometry, 40, pp. 35-41Hendler, J., Shadbolt, N., Hall, W., Berners-Lee, T., Weitzner, D., Web science: An interdisciplinary approach to understanding the web (2008) Communications of ACM, 51 (7)Hendler, J., Berners-Lee, T., (2009) From the Semantic Web to Social Machines: A Research Challenge for AI on the World Wide Web, , Artificial Intelligence 174. ElsevierKing, I., Li, J., Chan, K.T., A brief survey of computational approaches in social computing (2009) Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks-IEEELatapy, M., Magnien, C., Del Vecchio, N., Basic notions for the analysis of large two-mode networks (2008) Social Networks-An International Journal of Structural Analysis, 30 (1), pp. 31-48. , ElsevierLatour, B., (2000) Ciência em Ação: Como Seguir Cientistas e Engenheiros Sociedade Afora, , Editora da UNESPLatour, B., (2005) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, , Oxford University PressLaw, J., (2009) Actor-Network Theory and Material Semiotics. The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory, , Blackwell Publishing LtdLubashevsky, I., Towards a description of social systems as a novel class of physical problems (2010) Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Humans and Computers, , Fukushimaken, JapanMeyer, E.T., Schroeder, R., Untangling the web of e-research: Towards a sociology of online knowledge (2009) Journal of Infometrics, 3, pp. 246-260. , ElsevierNewman, M.E.J., Who is the best connected scientist? A study of scientific coauthorship networks (2001) Phys. Rev. e, 64, p. 016131. , Phys.Rev. E64 (2001) 016132Pereira, R., Miranda, L.C., Baranauskas, M.C.C., Piccolo, L.S.G., Almeida, L.D.A., Reis, J.C., Interaction design of social software-clarifying requirements through a culturally aware artifact (2011) IEEE International Conference on Information SocietyPietilanen, A.K., Diot, C., Dissemination in opportunistic social networks: The role of temporal communities (2012) Proceedings of the Thirteenth ACM International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing (MobiHoc '12)Pigné, Y., Dutot, A., Guinard, F., Olivier, D., GraphStream: A tool for bridging the gap between complex systems and dynamic graphs (2007) 4th European Conference on Complex Systems (ECCS'2007)Rosa, M.G., Fadigas, I.S., Andrade, M.T.T., Pereira, H.B.B., Abordagem de redes por cliques: aplicação a redes de coautoria (2012) I Brazilian Workshop on Social Network Analysis and MiningSingh, M., Dwivedi, Y., Hachney, R., Pesynski, K., Innovation in communication: An actor-network analysis of social websites (2012) International Journal of Actor-Network Theory and Technological Innovation, 4 (1)Singh, L., Beard, M., Getoor, L., Blake, M., Visual mining of multi-modal social networks at different abstraction levels (2007) 11th IEEE International Conference on Information Visualization (2007)Ströele, V., Zimbrão, G., Souza, J.M., Análise de redes sociais científicas: modelagem multi-relacional (2012) I Brazilian Workshop on Social Network Analysis and MiningSzell, M., Lambiotte, R., Thurner, S., Multirelational organization of large-scale social networks in an online world (2010) Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of USA-PNAS, 107 (31)Warshall, S., A theorem on Boolean matrices (1962) Journal of the ACM, 9 (1), pp. 11-12Potts, L., Diagramming with actor network theory: A method for modeling holistic experience (2008) IEEEWu, F., Li, X., Huang, L., Research on knowledge diffusion in disciplines based on actor network theory (2011) IEEE