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A general understanding of the concept of social networking has emerged over the past decade, primarily as a result of the popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. However, both the mobilization of social networks to achieve goals and the study of the structure and function of these social arrangements have been carried out for much longer than the relatively recent and very rapid adoption of communication technologies would seem to imply. the information and the comunication. . Social network analysis (SNA) is proving to be a powerful tool for understanding collective action. It has its origins in the sociological study of small groups and interpersonal relationships, especially as described in the works of Georg Simmel (1858-1918), and in the analytical and representational techniques developed in the branch of mathematics known as theory. of graphs.
The two fundamental concepts at the core of SNA are nodes and links. Nodes are the discrete social objects that make up the network, such as individuals, communities, organizations, or countries. Links, or ties, identify and describe the relationships between nodes, and can differ in at least four ways.
The quality of a link refers to the substantive nature of the relationship between the nodes, be it friendship, romance, working together or belonging to the same voluntary association. The amount of a tie refers to the relative strength of the relationship it represents. For example, we consider some of our friends to be better or closer than others, perhaps on the basis of a deeper emotional bond or some shared experience. Multiplexity represents the idea that the relationship between nodes can be based on more than one quality. So, for example, you may be in a romantic relationship with someone you work with. Thus, the bond between the two of you would have a multiplexity of two. Symmetry refers to the amount of reciprocity between nodes, with respect to a particular tie. So if one of your friends evaluates the strength of your friendship the same way you do, then this relationship is highly symmetric. However, if a friend or family member relies on you for moral support more than you do on them, then this is not a symmetrical relationship.
Social networks can also differ with respect to size and scale. The number of nodes can be limited to members of an immediate or extended family, or it can expand upwards to the hundreds of thousands of followers that some celebrities have on Facebook. These fan-based linkages can be extremely skewed, as in the case of fake news icon Stephen Colbert, who has over four million Twitter followers, yet follows no one. The size of the network tends to illustrate the phenomenon known as cumulative advantage, or what mathematicians call a power law. What this means is that as the number of your connections increases, you are likely to see a very dramatic increase in the number of connections, as if your initial set of connections were not establishing its own connections.
The scale of a network is a measure of how geographically distributed the network is, whether it is limited to a neighborhood, for example, or covers a region, a nation, or the world. Focusing on celebrities for a moment, authors like Paolo Coelho and Orhan Pamuk, whose novels have sold millions of copies in multiple languages, attract a huge following on social networking sites around the world. In this way, people who would otherwise probably never know of each other’s existence have the potential to interact through the node that represents their common interest in contemporary literature.
Moving away from social networks and the type of highly asymmetric networks associated with celebrities, in 1973, Stanford University sociologist Mark Granovetter published an article titled “The Strength of Weak Ties.” In this much-cited work, the author clearly demonstrates the potential of SNA when he is able to show that acquaintances are actually more important than close friends when it comes to job hunting.
The next article in the series will take a closer look at some characteristics of network connections.