Noah Cohen

3 March 2009

The Strength of Weak Ties

Mark Granovetter uses his paper The Strength of Weak Ties primarily to point

out weaknesses in studies of social networks caused by the exclusion of weak

ties from their analysis. He is concerned with mapping social networks and with

the functions served by strong and weak social ties. He does not explicitly

define strong ties, but hopes that the reader can agree to some intuitive

definition based on the amount of time, intensity of emotion and reciprocity that

characterize the tie.

For the purposes of this paper, Grannovetter assumes that most social network

arrangements are possible, but not what he calls the “forbidden triad.”

Grannovetter defines the forbidden triad as the interrelation between three

people in which two third parties, B and C each have a strong relationship with

the first party A, but not with each other. While this seems as though it would

generally hold true in “real life” relationships, it seems fairly likely to occur in

relationships initiated and carried out electronically. Bob may have friends (Alice

and Eve) who he has met online, perhaps in WoW, MySpace or a similar online

community, whom he spends a great deal of time with and has developed a

deep friendship with despite never having met personally. If Alice were a WoW

player and Eve a Second Lifer, it is likely that they would never meet – thereby

completing the forbidden triad. Similarly, any of Bob’s meat-space friends are

unlikely to develop even weak connections with either Alice or Eve. For this

reason, applying the analysis put forth by Grannovetter to digital communities

may not be as valid as it is towards meat-communities.

Exceptions aside, Grannovetter tries to use maps of social networks to

determine how complex communal tasks are accomplished. He finds that due to

the exclusion of instances of the forbidden triad from his models, all bridges

(relationships spanning gaps between two social clusters) are always weak ties,

and that the path between any two people or nodes can be made shorter

utilizing steps along weak paths than along only strong ties. Unfortunately, most

studies of social networks to date only account for strong ties, implying the

need for further study in this field.

The descriptions and analysis of the social structures of the manufacturing plant

where supposedly marginal workers began reporting insect bites that led to

severe symptoms. The supposed fringe community members were the first to

report bites, but reports quickly spread throughout the plant. This, according to

Grannovetter, indicates that early adopters may not be as fringe as previously

thought – which makes sense. Success among early adopters is typically

necessary for a product’s overall success. If initial reviews are poor and other

factors do not contribute strongly, a product will not generally catch on. It is

every marketer’s dream to have customers have positive associations with their

product but not remember where, when or from whom these associations arose.

The similar discovery that more people find jobs through acquaintances than

through friends lends support to the central claim of the paper – that without

weak ties, communities cannot organize effectively, and cannot communicate

needs and excesses across long social distances. This matches many amateur

social scientists advice on how to advance professionally – to have a far-

reaching network of weak ties so that you can stay abreast of needs and

opportunities in as many locations and organizations as possible.

Visualizing Social Networks

In Visualizing Social Networks, Linton Freeman gives a brief history of the

development of social visualizations. In this article, Freeman states and supports

the view of historian Alfred Crosby – that visualization and measurement alone

are responsible for the recent explosive advances and growth in science.

Following the nearly complete lack of support for this claim, Freeman launches

into a history of what he considers important milestones in visualization history –

from hand-drawn graphs to 3-D computing software dedicated solely to data

visualization.

The body of the article was rather bland and straightforward, and did little more

than present the history. It was not until near the end of the article that Freeman

indicated what he thought future developments could or should bring to the field

of data visualization.

From his conclusion…

“Future developments will undoubtedly extend current trends. Network
analysts already have made considerable progress in developing
programs for computation (Freeman, 1988). And, as I have shown in
this paper, we have made progress in developing programs for
visualization. We can look forward to similar progress in developing
database programs designed to facilitate the storage and retrieval of
social network data. But the real breakthrough will occur when we
develop a single program that can integrate these three kinds of tools
into a single program. Only then will we be able to access network data
sets and both compute and visualize their structural properties quickly
and easily.”

This three-fold advance is still off a short ways into the future – though some

applications do begin to address all three issues – Microsoft Excel for one,

implements storage, retrieval, computation, and creation of visual

representations of data, if on a relatively small scale. Applications that interface

with existing DB systems to generate visualizations would also move closer to

Freeman’s ideal system, and if his theories are to be believed, lead into another

great burst of scientific development.

The Network Community: An Introduction

Barry Wellman, in The Network Community: An Introduction seeks to answer

questions about how macro social systems (communities) affect micro social

systems (relationships) and how micro social systems affect macro systems. He

begins with the reflection that the happy, tightly knit community of yesteryear is

as much a myth as today’s assumed individualist society. Wellman claims that

while communities have changed due to both external and internal forces, they

have not declined

Wellman blames in part for the shift in perception as much on politicians who

wax poetic about the golden days gone by as on social scientists who have

been swayed by such rhetoric and have failed to update their studies to match

what changes have taken place. He claims that social scientists by and large still

tailor their studies to “concrete” communities and ignore the more ephemeral

connections reaching around the globe. It is precisely this type of reflection –

reexamining to the fundamental principles of a field – that can bring about

dramatic changes to fields of study.

Aside from being in dire need of an editor to cut the length of this paper by ~1/3

Wellman has written a solid treatment of how communities persist and change

despite changes in the world around them. It is odd to think, though, that

communities could disappear at all, given the fundamental need of humans for

social interaction, support and solidarity. Had Wellman had the opportunity to

read Grannovetter’s work, he no doubt would have made overtures toward the

idea that more can get done now in the global community because of the

increased number and distance of weak ties instead of trying for so long to

combat the idea that they were causing the downfall of civilization.