Social Network Blog - g41

Week 5 – Community

As we discuss communities, we must first begin by understanding what makes a community. The definition and idea of community has changed and is different to each individual. However, despite the differences, at the core a community is composed of a combination of strong ties and weak ties. According to the Wellman and Wortley’s article, “strong ties provide emotional aid, small services, and companionship.” The article focuses on six different reasons for the role different ties play in peoples lives. The different reasons are: strength, access, structural, kinship, positional resource, and similarity and dissimilarity. These all help to create support, the purpose of ties. The article explores how different close ties are provide different kinds of support, for example intimate kin ties provide financial support.

However, Fischer explores if the setting effects type of ties and community by extension. He believes that there are two types of relations, traditional which are composed of relatives, neighbors, and fellow members of religious organizations. He comments about how our community has been “destroyed” by urbanism, creating a new type of relations, with co-workers, fellow members of secular organizations, just friends and others, called modern relations. In urban areas, the idea of community is greatly different than traditional. However, Fischer says that it is neither version of community is better or worse just different. People in urban areas are able to choose who they which to share close ties to. In cities more choice is available and people are more likely to form close ties with people similar to themselves, and less likely to be dependent on traditional relationships.

Bott explores the survival of traditional relationship, namely kin in an urban environment. She claims there is a close correlation with network connection and role segregation within married couples. Bott hypothesis that couples with more connected networks have a more conjugal role segregation. The reason being that both of these people enter the relationship with very well formed social networks which support the individual, thus the person maintains their personality and has less tendency to conform and unite with their spouse.

The main theme through out all the readings is support, the type of ties has changed as community has changed. Community has changed due to urbanization, but neither is better. Different people desire different types of ties and all are supportive and extremely necessary.

In the “Birds of a Feather” article, the level of homophily is not surprising, at least not surprising for most of the ties. “Similarity breeds connection” is a fairly obvious statement. People are naturally drawn to people like themselves; it is much easier to start a tie with someone who shares similar characteristics and activities. Along those lines, it is much easier to form a close tie with a person with a person who shares similar opinions, in the article this is called value homophily. Value homophily seems somewhat counter intuitive to me. In the article it talked about a person you are most likely to share close personal information or ask advice is someone who you share value homophily, however, I would think that someone you are asking advice would offer a different opinion or a different point of view. Essential by asking someone who shares you opinions and beliefs you are asking your self for advice. The other thin that I found interesting in the article was the difference in gender. I thought it was entertaining how the article discussed how gender homophily at young ages, because I can remember when boys thought girls were gross and the opposite was true. In the mist of the obvious, the article also said that boys at this age are less homophilious in the choices based on race than girls.
Are boys genetically less racist than girls? Is this natural tendency of young boys to form ties with other races stopped by years of education and influence by society?

In the “Homophily and assimilation among sports active adolescent substance users” article, it underlines the mainly negative affects of homophily and assimilation. First, users of that age are going through an awkward phase in their lives where individuals try to shape and develop themselves. As a result it no surprise that people share more ties with people similar to themselves. Adolescents do not want friends that even if not verbally stated make choices like not to drink, smoke cigarette or marijuana, which negatively critique the choices the individual has made. The article also discusses a level of peer influence in a negative fashion.
Can’t peers affect individuals in a positive manner, such as stop substance use, equally as it does in a negative manner, or do non-users simply choose not to form ties with users? Why is there a great trend to influence users negatively?

As I began to read the “Social network size in humans” I was extremely excited about the idea of using Christmas cards as a method of determining network size. I have always marveled at the Christmas card phenomenon. I personally always felt it was a way to flaunt one’s family’s success through a family photo and short paragraph about how well the children are doing in school. However, the people who are chosen to receive a Christmas card are even more significant. In the article, it predicts a limit of a 150 maximum ties for an individual. However, I know from years of Christmas cards that my family receives far more than a 150 cards. The number of cards my family receives is obviously higher because of my two parents and my brother all have individual social networks. The article says the mean of cards sent was 153 with a wide range of closeness both distance and emotionally. I believe the exaggerated number of xmas cards we receive and send, is that this is an opportunity to communicate personally but with minimal effort to distant ties, both physical distance and emotionally. As the article dissects the level of ties that a person sends xmas cards to, I believe that very close ties, xmas cards are merely a formality. Chances are you will see a tie that close over the holidays or at least speak with them on the phone.
Do to the wide range of tie strength that chistmas cards are sent to, has your family even created more than one card to cater to the different recipients, and why?

Bryce LeFort
Assignment # 2

The status of our core discussion networks has changed over the past few decades. Putnam and basically every other author we have read, Lovin, McPherson and Brashears all agree it reflects a much larger social change. The number of close personal ties has dropped significantly from even 1985. The results of the data collected by Smith-Lovin and Putnam as well as others, suggest that the number of people an individual discusses close personal matters has dropped by a third. These results are fairly common and seem to be an accurate depiction of our current social structure. The even more significant findings are that on average 25% of respondents say they have no one to confide these personal matters. Putnam refers to these close ties as our safety net; the people that help us emotionally, mentally and physically, when we are unable to support ourselves alone. So the question becomes, what are the causes of the larger social change that has influenced our social networks? Many different explanations are relevant but the underling driving factor is the necessity for the safety net is gone. Society has changed, people are more independent, and general well being of our country has steadily increased overtime. One of the leading causes of death in our country is automotive accidents, not disease or starvation. The drop in close personal ties has dropped because there is little need for and little these ties can do for us in our current society. The important matters that create the necessity have shifted toward an economic focus. It is difficult to argue that money doesn’t drive our current society. Putnam argues that the most recent generation in that past that has supported the necessity for close personal ties was the WWII generation. Times of crisis have bonded our country and communities more than any other driving factor. Even in recent years, 911 and Katrina gave a greater necessity and exposed a lack of close personal ties. These horrible acts created a reason for people to search for the safety net that has been missing. However, these hardships are isolated incidents; on average our generation has faced fewer hardships than past generations. Individuals now have the ability to choice to be social and choice who one forms close ties with. The ability to choose close ties with the increase of easy of supporting weak or distant ties has essential allowed people to choose fewer close friends from a larger pool. Putnam and Lovin address the cyber age and its ability to connect people of greater distances more easily but Putnam says, “It won’t solve our problems, It wont bring us chicken soup.” The necessity for the chicken soup has declined with the lack of crisis a person faces, and in the rare cases of emergency the close ties within family are still as strong, if not stronger because of the lack of other strong ties. McPherson suggests that even kin close ties have declined but Lovin and Putnam are both adamant that the kin ties are the most consistent ties across generations. As a result the choices that individuals are making for the close ties have a trend to be very homophilous. The article “Birds of a Feather..” tracks the growing trend of similarity within social networks. Maybe our lack of necessity to develop strong personal ties with others has hindered our ability and as a result we choose similar people because it is easiest to develop these relationships and safest. No matter what the cause of the growing homophily in our social networks, our close ties have vastly diminished to only family and similar individuals to ourselves.

The changing times have allowed people to place more attention on weak ties than focusing on developing close ties. From an economic standpoint the lack of necessity of strong ties has made it more beneficial for an individual to expand their network through weak ties. The shift toward weak ties is discussed in both the Dunbar and McCarthy articles. There is a correlation between amount of weak ties and strong ties, and our current society is more dependent on weak ties to benefit the individual, but when the next crisis occurs we will again realize what we are missing.

While the importance of centrality is impossible to deny, the Freeman article raises more questions than it answers. The difficulty arises as broad generalizations about the role of centrality are made across many different types of organizations, from a steel mill to social networks. Freeman runs into to many different definitions of types of centrality to make any diffident definitions. In order to understand the article, I think it is important that we clarify what we do know. Centrality is vital, group properties and processes are dependent upon it, no matter if the centrality is based on control, independence or activity. Group efficiency, group structure and complexity of organizational tasks all contribute in some way to determining the level of centrality. Since this class is called social networks I guess we should work from there and then attempt to move to other organizations. In social networks centrality is determined by ties and network structure. I agree that a key role of centrality is in combining subunits. The unit that connects and bridges different subunits has a special role, and without it, the structure could not exist. However as social ties grow and strengthen overtime, the importance of a central node fades. For combining weak ties a central node is essential, but between strong ties centrality takes a new role, one of guidance and authority for the remaining social structure. Is centrality more important in the forming and combining of ties or maintaining ties in long term bonds?

In the Wassserman article central nodes are called “stars.” The article is in conjunction with most of Freeman’s article, in determining who is a star. Degree, closeness, betweeness, information, and rank all help to define an individual node as being the star of a social network. Both articles attempt to base their findings in a graph and again with generalizations, but centrality for specific groups is very individual and has many subtleties. One being prestige of the node also can be called status. Both articles also give an equation to determine centrality. While I believe this is useful in determining a who maybe a star, it does not specify, this particular nodes role as a star to the rest of the social structure more than it has fulfilled the criteria better than anyone else. The article continues to differentiate between the effects of centrality: total effects centrality, immediate effects centrality and meditative effects centrality. While we maybe able to determine which node has the highest level of centrality and their effects to the rest of the structure, their specific role to the other individual nodes is still yet to be as easily quantified.

Reading the previous two articles, I have been most intreged to discover a hard line generalization about the effects a central node, star, has on the remaining social network. However, I forgot to examine a possible reverse effect. The Valente article, on “do popular students smoke?” gave a hypothesis of a more give and take relationship between popular, central nodes and group trends. While peer pressure is a common notion, the pressure the leader of a group to set trends for the group is widely over looked. The article states that popular kids are more likely to smoke. These popular smokers are closely tied to gender and ethnicity, and the results prove the correlation. A stronger association between smoking and popularity exist for girls than boys, and even more so for latino girls than latino boys, but the strongest association was for non-White boys. While determining which groups are most susceptible to being influenced by popularity to smoke is important in anti smoking campaigns, is there a possible genetic, gender and ethnic characteristic, that can explain susceptibility to peer-pressure?

The Kerbs article on mapping terrorist networks based on closeness and betweeness gave a welcome shock of reality to the importance of network structure. The severity of the acts of 911 emphasis the necessity of science and factual information behind determining social structure and social leaders. A key concept that in the article that discusses in determining tie strength and leaders is trust. Trust however is extremely difficult to measure across different social networks and its own evolution as the group grows together. I have to admit I never really thought that mapping out social networks could be protecting our country, but apparently I was wrong.

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