Social Network Blog - y10

1) Wellmann

Wellmann refutes the claim that community groups are disappearing with the advent of “industrialization, urbanization, bureaucratization, capitalism, socialism and technological change,” leaving behind individuals who feel isolated and alienated. Instead, he argues that community groups are not dissolving but merely changing from fairly small, local, and highly connected groups into larger, global, “sparsely-knit and loosely-bounded” social networks.

Although his argument does make sense, it is unfortunate that he doesn’t provide more evidence as to why people’s perception of the past includes so many fallacies or more specifically, why people are wrong in thinking that “preindustrial communities may never have been as locally bounded as tradition has maintained.”

Moreover, it also seems like Wellmann does not provide adequate support as to why people are not satisfied with the current state of communities and why they are feeling nostalgic. Are we really so ignorant about the past that we don’t recognize the problems with older types of communities or is it the case that the new communities that have replaced the old ones do not function in the same way at all, causing people to question the nature and purpose of these new types of communities? And considering all this, would it be fair to compare communities of the past with the communities of today? Modern communities are so much more complex and function on so many different levels when compared to older communities that it might not even be fair to place them under the same umbrella.

2) Freeman

It was interesting to see issues of social networks discussed in cartoons as it reminded me how deeply these issues are integrated into our everyday lives. However, it also made me realize that although we come across these sorts of situations very often we are not consciously aware of the inner workings of such interactions at all. This could be the reason of our efforts to name and classify these phenomena through cartoons.

On a different note, Figure 3 of the cartoons also made me think about the nature of new communities that Wellmann talks about, especially Internet communities. Since such communities are interest-based, they are not stable and the ties might change over time as demonstrated by the cartoon. It would be interesting to look at the problems caused by such instabilities of new communities.

3) Monge & Contractor

Although it was a pretty straightforward article the examples provided were not too insightful. I also have to admit that the part about “Structural Holes” was not very clear. However, the terms outlined in this chapter still clarified a lot of issues discussed in the Wellmann article and/or mentioned in the cartoons. For instance, the notion of a web of social relations mentioned in Figure 1 of the cartoons and explained by Wellmann as a network of nodes and ties became a clearer concept with the proper definitions. It’s just mind-boggling to think about such a web for one’s entire relations and to realize that we all function within such a web without the need to visualize its various elements. So how consciously do we utilize these concepts in our daily lives?

The study of the small world problem by Stanley Milgram provides great incite about the nature of networks and how information travels within these networks. However, the weakness of this study is that it does not take into consideration the density of the networks. The study looks at personal networks, instead of whole networks. Therefore, it is not limited by geographic boundaries but at the same time it can’t provide much information about whether people are using the shortest possible links to reach their target, or whether the incomplete links failed due to errors in choosing the ‘right’ intermediaries vs. the lack of appropriate links between the starting person and the target.

To overcome these problems, the Killsworth study takes the opposite approach and maps out a whole network and looks at relationships within this network through ‘actual’ and ‘conceptual’ paths in order to study the effects of error. This way the problems of the Milgram study are eliminated, yet the issue of boundaries becomes a problem. We still can’t tell if the most efficient chains are formed or not, since people outside this closed network might have been useful in the transfer of information.

Furthermore, this type of analysis is what brings forth the supposed disappearance of communities according to Wellman. As people look at whole networks and realize that they are low-density networks, they assume that communities are disappearing. However, as the Killsworth study itself points out ‘closed systems’ like these cannot be generalized to the global level. So we are still facing a paradox in terms of how to look at networks as we see that both approaches have their strengths and weaknesses.

In scale free networks, majority of the nodes have less-than-average degree and a small fraction of the hubs are many times better connected than others. Lois Weinberg would be one of these hubs, or in other words, a sociometric star. However, it’s not just the degree of links that matters in such a network. The range of those links is also very important. As we see in the Lois Weinberg example, what gives her so much social power is not necessarily the fact that she knows a lot of people but more so that she knows a lot of people who know other people in different networks/subgroups. This also relates to Granovetter’s idea of “strength of weak links.” Instead of maintaining lots of strong ties through “homophily” and “triadic closure” (as outlined in the Watts article) having lots of weak ties allows one to bridge between networks instead of staying within the same network. While the lack of homophily allows a higher range, the lack of triadic closure between links gives extra power to someone like L.W. who can act as a gatekeeper.

Questions:
1) What is the role of in degree and out degree links in regards to the small world problem? Abundance of which type of link would be more advantageous in terms of reaching a target? Is it possible that the discrepancies between in degree and out degree links is what causes chains to break?
2) How would it affect the Korte & Milgram study if they also had ‘negros’ among their starting population, allowing us to compare ‘negro’ -> ‘negro’ and ‘negro’ -> white chains as well?
3) What kind of changes would there be in the Korte & Milgram study concerning racial groups if it was repeated again today? What has changed about our acquaintance networks within the past 35 years in regards to race? class? gender?
4) Is Lois Weinberg more likely to succeed with the Small World assignment on Penn’s campus than someone in our class?

Granovetter’s theory of “strength of weak ties” looks at how information travels among networks through bridges, which are formed between weak ties. He claims that strong ties do no provide as much diversity of knowledge as weak ties, since strong ties constitute more densely knit and homogenous networks.

Although Granovetter has an interesting and valid point, it seems simplistic to talk only about tie strength to determine how information travels between networks. I think it’s very important to see what makes certain weak ties better sources of information than others and Burt provides more information in this area by taking Granovetter’s findings a step further.

Burt incorporates structural holes into his theory, claiming that the existence of structural holes between one’s contacts places one in a privileged position (like in the case of Lois Weinberg) with an increased competitive advantage in terms of entrepreneurial opportunities, provided that one doesn’t have structural holes in his/her own networks. This way Burt establishes the importance of social capital in a market production equation.

He also brings up issues like trust and the speed of information travel in his study. These are interesting concepts since it’s more likely that our strong ties are more reliable and allow information to travel faster. Therefore, these concepts become problematic but at the same time crucial aspects of weak ties since the rate of return depends on how fast we receive reliable information. So there seems to be a tradeoff between reliability and speed vs. novelty and utility of the information we receive when tie strength is at stake. Yet it seems like weak ties that are as reliable and as likely to deliver information quickly as possible would be our best bet to stay well connected. This would hold true for the Milgram study as well, since one would be more likely to connect to a target through weak ties, while one would be more likely to ensure that the chain is not broken through strong ties that are more reliable.

Taking a different approach McPherson et al. look at strong ties instead and observe the changes in people’s relationships that have taken place in the last couple decades. Moreover, instead of analyzing this data in terms of how information travels, they concentrate on how our confidants provide various types of support as the outcome of these relationships. It made a lot of sense to see a decline in educational diversity considering higher education levels, and increase in number of people who discuss important matters with their spouses, considering that men and women have started to be viewed as equals after the women’s rights movements.

However, I was very surprised to see that there were so many people who claimed to have 0-1 person they discussed “important matters” with. Although this study was interesting in terms of showing how strong ties might be diminishing, especially among neighborhoods and communities, it did not address the issue of whether people are becoming more isolated or becoming more connected through weaker ties. The title of the study and the conclusion were kind of contradictory in this sense. Such a discussion would have provided great incite concerning Wellman’s argument about the changing nature of communities.

Questions:
1) How would gender play a role in the structure of social networks? Is one gender more likely to maintain weak vs. strong ties? Is one sex more likely to act as bridges between groups? Is one sex more likely to make use of structural holes?

2) What’s the relationship between tie strength and shifts in modes of communication? What kinds of changes take place as we move towards online communication as opposed to face-to-face communication?

1. I gave my folder to Renata Holod, who is the Director of Visual Studies, which is an interdisciplinary major, tying Renata to many other departments. I think her personal characteristics increase the chances of the folder reaching its target, Susan Yoon.

As outlined by Milgram, people are more likely to pass on the folder to people like themselves and three times more likely to pass it on to someone from the same sex, so the fact they are both female should be beneficial. Also, both of these people are part of Penn faculty and have similar university affiliations. Although their racial characteristics are not similar, I don’t think this should become a barrier, even though the Korte & Milgram study brings up the difficulty of crossing racial barriers. However, this study is dated and I don’t think race will play an important role considering there is a lot of diversity at Penn.

The fact that Renata has been at Penn for a long time and that she is well-connected to different members of the Penn community also increases the chances of the folder reaching its target. The only personal characteristic that worries me is that Renata is extremely busy and it might take her a while to hand over the folder to someone else. Being a Professor herself though she would probably acknowledge the importance of such a study and carry it out, even though it’s not in her field of work.

2. Although I’ve known Renata since my freshman year, I can’t say that we have a very strong relationship. We don’t see each other that frequently and our relationship is on the advisor-advisee level.

However, based on Granovetter’s argument, weak ties like this are more likely to transmit information among networks and act as bridges, yet as Burt points out reliability becomes an important issue and I’m not sure how much I can trust Renata, which poses a problem for success.

3. Considering that Susan is an assistant professor, it’s likely that she hasn’t been at Penn for a long time, which would mean that her social network is not likely to be very broad. It also decreases the chances of her being a very popular and prestigious figure, both within the Penn community and the GSE community. According to Monge, this lack of prestige would make her likely to have less in-degree relationships, making it harder for the folder to reach her. Moreover, although I don’t believe that racial boundaries will be a problem, the fact that she is Asian will not make things easier either. For all these reasons, I don’t think she is a very accessible target. However, as we saw in the Milgram study, knowing the “right” people, like the stockbroker in Massachusetts, is the key to the success of this study.

4. Although Renata doesn’t know the target person, she does know some faculty members in the GSE, who are very likely to know Susan. Therefore, I’m assuming that the folder will pass from Renata to a GSE faculty member and then to pass onto either another GSE faculty or Susan. So the folder should travel mainly among faculty. I expect this chain to be mostly women considering that the starting person and the target person are both female, and considering that there are more females in the GSE. I’m expecting the folder to pass from Annenberg to GSE and I would expect that the people in the chain would have been at Penn for a while since they are more likely to know other people, who could be old or new to the campus.

The person who finally passes the folder to the target is likely to be a faculty member who is a superior of Susan. This person could possibly be the department head or a faculty member with seniority, especially considering that the Krote & Milgram study showed that racial boundaries are more likely to be crossed moving down the ladder of organizational hierarchy. It’s also very likely that this person might be a hub in the network.

5. I think the folder will be passed through 2-3 people before it reaches the target, and this process should take little about a week.