In the article, “Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg,” Malcolm Gladwell looks at the power of “the ultimate connector” in social network analysis. There were many observations about his connector( Lois Weisberg) that I found to be interesting. As the body of the article takes the reader through “fluke” occurrences regarding Lois’ life and experiences, the reader begins to realize that this is not, in fact, a coincidence. Gladwell describes the process of Lois’ central position: “First, she reaches out to somebody—somebody outside her world. Equally important, that person responds to her”(2). Using network terminology, Lois is a specific type of person who seems to be able to connect people from all isolated parts of society. Perhaps Lois’ connector status can be best illustrated by the results of the Stanley Milgram study—the fact that over half of the letters sent to the stockbroker in Massachusetts reached him via two people, Mr. Jones and Mr. Brown. Although they might not be the same level of connector as Lois, they are still connectors. Having known this concept, “Six Degrees of Separation,” before reading this article, the Kevin Bacon game helped to further illustrate the complex nature of the role of connector. It also shows how obsessed society is in feeling a direct sense of connection.
The most interesting part of this article was the description of Lois’ personality: she is described as someone who belongs to different social circles and worlds, someone who has had many occupations and her observant nature, which allows people to find her and come together through her(reception at the Musuem of Contemporary Art).
Questions:
1)Gladwell makes the point that part of the job of a connector is to have many, weak ties. Can you think of someone at Penn that illustrates this phenomenon?
2)Do you think that poorer people are isolated, and this is in fact what deprives them? Because earlier in his argument, Gladwell describes the close-knit nature of the ties that many poorer people are involved with. How do we make sense of this? Doesn’t having strong ties, even within your own SES and with similar backgrounds, still give you a chance to become successful, but in a different way?
In Duncan J. Watts article, “The ‘New’ Science of Networks,” Watts explores the emerging trends and analysis involved with network theory. After giving a brief history of the science, i.e. Watts & Strogatz 1998, he predicted that all networks should be small-world networks. After doing further research, a scientist by the name of Kleinberg came to realize that social networks were both small and searchable. Therefore, he needed to create a class of “generalized small networks”, and an algorithmic equation to correct this problem. Watts also describes the new research that has been conducted in specific areas of network theory, such as network motifs, community structure and social contagion. Watts points out that all of the research and studies of the past have built on one another. For example, “the intuition that a few random ‘shortcuts’ in the midst of locally dense neighborhoods can generate the structure of small-world networks(1998) bears a remarkable similarity to Rapaport’s(1963) analysis of random-biased nets, which inspired Granovetter’s investigation of the strength of weak ties”(263). The history of this science helps to unveil the complexities of social network analysis and how we are always altering our definitions and theories.
In Stanley Milgram’s article, “The Small-World Problem,” Milgram asks the question: “Given any two people in the world, person X and person Z, how many intermediate acquaintance links are needed before X and Z are connected?”(62). He beings his discussion by explaining that there are two views of the small world: one viewpoint explains that people from any walk of life can be connected by a few acquaintances, while the other explains that two people will not be able to connect so easily because their social circles do not intersect. Milgram conducted two major research projects, one starting in Kansas and one in Nebraska. Taking into consideration the theory of social structure(people tend to know only other people like them) and other factors(the possible reverse direction of chains), Milgram’s experiment are extremely sound and have fascinating results. He found that the chains resulted from 2-10 intermediaries, with a median of 5.One finding that is very interesting is that certain kinds of communications are actually strongly influenced by sex. I also thought that the discrepancy between intuition and fact were fascinating.
Questions
1)Milgram describes the problems with chains dying only a few feet from the resident of the target person. How can we avoid this problem in our experiment? What incentives or techniques can we use to encourage people to participate?
2)As Milgram explains, “Social communication is sometimes restricted less by physical distance than by social distance” (66). Do you think that this will be the case for our experiment as well?
In Korte and Milgram’s article, “Acquaintance Networks between Racial Groups,” the authors look at how race affects social network analysis. The results were very interesting—they showed that the number of completed chains was 2.5 times greater for a white target as compared to a black target. The results of this experiment discussed and analyzed. One interesting problem that arose was that black-target chains had to overcome certain barriers that white-target chains did not—essentially, they had to cross both within their own race and across to other races. The authors describe many different reasons as to why the specific outcome was reached. The results confirmed that acquaintance chains are very much tied with the social structure of our world. This analysis was very interesting
Questions:
1)do you think that if this study were conducted today that the results would be similar or strikingly different?
2)does gender or religion play a role?
“The accuracy of small world chains in social networks,” is an article that looks at the actual paths people take to reach their targets, using intermediaries. The article uses mathematical terms to first define the network. In this case, it was 105 telephone survey interviewers. This study looked at the actual path length for each of the interviews. The article then looks at the accuracy of those paths, using “r” as a significance indicator. The study concluded that when determining small world chains, that inaccuracy in selection of small world chain intermediaries is common. This mathematical model for determining accuracy seems sound, but I think that further research should be conducted in order to give it validity.