Social networks

Social networks are social structures composed of groups of people, which are connected by one or more types of relationships such as friendship, kinship, common interests or shared knowledge.

Social network analysis examines the social structure using Graph Theory and identifying the entities as “nodes” or “vertices” and relationships as “links” or “edges”. The resulting graph structure is often very complex. As mentioned, there may be many types of links between nodes. Multidisciplinary research has shown that social networks operate on many levels, from family relationships to relationships statewide organizations (in this case we speak of political networks), playing a critical role in determining the political agenda and the degree to which individuals or organizations reach their goals or are influenced.

In its simplest form, a social network is a map of all the relevant links between all nodes studied. We speak here of networks “sociocentric” or “complete”. Another option is to identify the network that involves a person (in different social contexts in which it interacts), in this case refers to “personal network”.

Complexity of Social Networks

The social network can also be used to measure social capital (ie the value that an individual obtains accessible resources through their social network). These concepts are often in a diagram where the nodes and ties are points, lines.

Social Networks in the Field of Internet

The germinal software social networking part of the theory of Six degrees of separation, according to which all people of the planet is connected by no more than six people. In fact, there is a U.S. patent known as six degrees patent for which they have already paid Tribe and LinkedIn. There are many other patents covering the technology to automate the creation of networks and applications related to these.

These social networks are based on the theory of six degrees, six degrees of separation is the theory that anyone on Earth can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than six intermediaries . The theory was first proposed in 1929 by the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy on a short story called Chains. The concept is based on the idea that the number of acquaintances grows exponentially with the number of links in the chain, and only a small number of links are necessary for the body of knowledge becomes the entire human population.

Also reflected in the book “Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age” of the sociologist Duncan Watts, and ensures that you can access anyone in the world in just six “hops”.

According to this theory, each person knows on average, between friends, family and work or school, about 100 people. If each of those friends or close acquaintances associated with other 100 people, anyone can pass a message to 10,000 people just asking a friend to pass the message to their friends.

These 10,000 people would second-level contacts that an individual does not know but you can easily learn by asking friends and relatives who were present, and that is often used to hold a job or make a purchase. When you ask someone, for example, if you know one we are interested in working secretary pulling informal social networks that run our society. This argument assumes that each person 100 friends are mutual friends. In practice, this means that the number of contacts of the second level will be substantially less than 10,000 because it is very usual to have mutual friends in social networks.

If those 10,000 known another 100, the network would be expanded to 1,000,000 people connected in a third level, to 100,000,000 in the fourth level, fifth level in 10,000,000,000 1,000,000,000,000 and a sixth level. In six steps, and with the available technologies, it could send an individual anywhere in the world.

Obviously the more steps have to give, the more distant will be the connection between two individuals and communication more difficult. Internet, however, has eliminated some of these barriers creating real world social networks, especially in particular segment of professionals, artists, etc..

In the early 50′s, Ithiel de Sola Pool (MIT) and Manfred Kochen (IBM) attempted to prove the theory mathematically. Although they were able to state the question “given a set of N people, what is the probability that each member of these N are connected to another member via k1, k2, k3 ,…, kn links?” After twenty years were still unable to solve the problem to his satisfaction.

In The social software weblog grouped 120 websites in 10 categories and QuickBase has also developed a complete picture of social networking.

The origin of social networks goes back at least to 1995, when Randy Conrads creates the classmates.com website. This social network is intended for people to regain or maintain contact with former classmates, college, et cetera.

In these communities, an initial number of participants send messages to members of their own social network by inviting them to join the site. New participants repeat the process, increasing the total number of members and network links. The sites offer features such as automatic updating of the address book, visible profiles, the ability to create new links with presentation services and other forms of social networking online. Social networks can also be created around business relationships.

ICT tools to enhance the effectiveness of online social networks (‘social software’), operating in three areas, “the 3Cs” of cross:

• Communication (helping us to share knowledge).
• Community (help us find and integrate communities).
• Cooperation (help us to do things together).

The establishment of contacts combined (blended networking) is a social network approach that combines elements of online and real world to create a mixture. A social network of people is combined where established by face to face events and online community. The two elements of the mix complement each other.

Bibliography

1. Wikipedia. Red Social. http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_social
2. Linton Freeman, The Development of Social Network Analysis. Vancouver: Empirical Press, 2006.
3. Wellman, Barry and S.D. Berkowitz, eds., 1988. Social Structures: A Network Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
4. Hansen, William B. and Reese, Eric L. 2009. Network Genie User Manual. Greensboro, NC: Tanglewood Research
5. Freeman, Linton. 2006. The Development of Social Network Analysis. Vancouver: Empirical Pres, 2006; Wellman, Barry and S.D. Berkowitz, eds., 1988. Social Structures: A Network Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
6. Scott, John. 1991. Social Network Analysis. London: Sage.
7. Wasserman, Stanley, and Faust, Katherine. 1994. Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
8. The Development of Social Network Analysis Vancouver: Empirical Press.
9. A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, “On Social Structure,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute: 70 (1940): 1-12.
10. [Nadel, SF. 1957. The Theory of Social Structure. London: Cohen and West
11. The Networked Individual: A Profile of Barry Wellman. [1]
12. Mark Granovetter, “Introduction for the French Reader,” Sociologica 2 (2007): 1-8; Wellman, Barry. 1988. “Structural Analysis: From Method and Metaphor to Theory and Substance.” Pp. 19-61 in Social Structures: A Network Approach, edited by Barry Wellman and S.D. Berkowitz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
13. Mark Granovetter, “Introduction for the French Reader,” Sociologica 2 (2007): 1-8; Wellman, Barry. 1988. “Structural Analysis: From Method and Metaphor to Theory and Substance.” Pp. 19-61 in Social Structures: A Network Approach, edited by Barry Wellman and S.D. Berkowitz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (see also Scott, 2000 and Freeman, 2004)
14. Barry Wellman, Wenhong Chen and Dong Weizhen. “Networking Guanxi.” Pp. 221-41 in Social Connections in China: Institutions, Culture and the Changing Nature of Guanxi, edited by Thomas Gold, Douglas Guthrie and David Wank. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
15. Could It Be A Big World After All?: Judith Kleinfeld article
16. Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, Duncan Watts.
17. James H. Fowler and Nicholas A. Christakis. 2008. “Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study.“ British Medical Journal. December 4, 2008: doi:10.1136/bmj.a2338. Para aquellos que no puedan ver el original: Happiness: It Really is Contagious Retrieved December 5, 2008.
18. «Genes and the Friends You Make», Wall Street Journal, 27 de enero de 2009.
19. Fowler, J. H. (10 de febrero de 2009). «Model of Genetic Variation in Human Social Networks» (PDF).Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106 (6):  pp. 1720–1724. doi:10.1073/pnas.0806746106.
20. Medios de comunicación y solidaridad: reflexiones entorno a la (des)articulicación social, Ed. Universitat Jaume I, España, 200
21. La referencia más completa es: Wasserman, Stanley, & Faust, Katherine. (1994). Social Networks Analysis: Methods and Applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Un resumen, breve y claro puede encontrarse en Krebs, Valdis. (2000). “The Social Life of Routers.” Internet Protocol Journal, 3 (December): 14-25.
22. Cohesive.blocking R es el programa para calcular la cohesión estructural según el algoritmo de Moody-White (2003). Ese wiki provee numerosos ejemplos y un tutorial para utilizar R.