Tom R. Leppard (postdoctoral fellow at the Data Science and AI Academy) will present his research on network reciprocity in UK Grime music collaboration.

Givers, Takers and Reciprocators: Reimagining Individuals and Groups in UK Grime Music
Traditional network measures like centrality and brokerage primarily focus on an individual’s position within a network, but they often overlook how that individual is integrated into the broader group. In this talk, I’ll challenge this perspective by reimagining social network structure. Using the familiar concept of reciprocity, I’ll examine how individuals signal their participation in a group and receive validation from it. Drawing on 22 years of collaboration data collected from 122 UK Grime artists, I propose a new way to think about reciprocity as a measure of individual-to-group (artist-to-genre) integration. Grime—a London-based rap genre that emerged from the reggae scene in the early 2000s—has a complex and fluid social structure, driven by both innovative collaboration and intense competition. I argue that this approach offers a deeper understanding of how people contribute to the formation of the Grime genre, shifting the focus from mere connections to the quality of an individual’s integration within the genre’s social and cultural fabric.