Lecture 1: intro Flashcards
defintion social network
defined as a set of nodes (social actors such as individuals, groups or organizations) an ties representing some relationship or absence of a relationship among the actors’
ego-network
the ensemble of ego ( = focussing our attention on a single focal actor) and his alters (=the set of nodes that the ego has ties with) ties among these
Actors can be connected via:
- similarities
- social relations
- interactions
- flows (of resources)
Ties characteristics:
- Binary (present or absent: friends or not friends)
- Valued (frequency, intensity or strength of ties)
- Directed (one-directional as in giving advice) or undirected (physically proximate)
2 types of ties
State-type ties:
- have continuity over time, open-ended persistence and
- operationalize in terms of strength/intensity and duration (like kinship or role-based ties)
Event-type ties:
- discrete and transitory nature can be counted over periods of time
- operationalize in terms of frequency and occurrence (like interactions or transactions (giving adivce, sending a email))
Realist persepective
there is a true network of relationships out there and our job as researchers is to discover it.
nominalist persepective
every network question that we as researchers ask generates it own network. This is more a social constructionist persepective. So for example think about your own network of friends. If I aks you today who are your friends, this might be different next week, although parts of it don’t change.
Strength of weak ties (theory from Granovetter)
The stronger the tie between two people, the more likely their social worlds will overlap (same ties with same third parties)
Bridging ties re potential sources of novel ideas (links a person to someone who isn’t conneted to other friends
Strong ties are unlikely to be the source of novel info, weak ties are!
- more about the oppurtunity bridging gives you
Structural holes (theory by Burt)
concerned with ‘ego networks’ and the power of the person bridging the hole (ego).
A network with more bridges is likely to afford more novel info that one without. Network with more bridges is likely to receive more nonredundant info which can perform better/ being perceived as the source of new ideas