Communication Networks

Technocentric network managers see network nodes as hardware/software units linked by voice, video, text, and numerical data traffic, while human communication network analysts focus on people as nodes. They use various means of communication to link with one another. Communication scientists study human communication networks ranging from nodes at the intrapersonal level through levels of increasing aggregation: individuals, groups, departments, organizations, nations, and cultures. They also map networks of words at various levels.

One kind of human communication network analysis is representational, using indirect communication data projected into a medium. An example is the network of presidential cabinet members who appear within news stories in a large collection. The second kind indexes actual message traffic among nodes. An example is a network of who sends e-mail to whom.

Outside the academic communication discipline, the variations in the use of the term communication network can be perplexing. Therefore, the discussion can begin by excluding the technocentric network: for example, when a manager of a cell phone company considers the idea of a communication network. In this context, he or she envisions a radio network covering a large number of local land areas, each called a “cell” and having a fixed transceiver base station linked to an array of 360-degree antennae, usually mounted on a tower. These base stations link to each other to provide coverage over a wide area, such as a country or a larger global region. This network enables portable transceivers, such as mobile phones, netbooks, laptops, and 3G, 4G, or GSM-enabled tablets to exchange information with other units as they move around in the coverage network. This network description does not mention people. Rather, this technocentric view of a communication network sees hardware/software nodes linked by exchange of information with other hardware/software nodes.

In contrast, when a cell phone user thinks of a communication network, he or she is more likely to envision the people she talks and texts with and who do so with one another. This view is of a human communication network. Networks with human nodes are the primary concern of human communication scholars.

A brief definition of human communication is helpful in making sense of the variety of human networks researchers have studied. Communication is the exchange or representation of spoken, textual, or nonverbal symbolic content in various audio, visual, and textual forms within and across nodes at various levels of analysis: intrapersonal, individual, group, community, organization, nation, and cross-national culture. The producers of communication content and its consumers are embedded, along with networks of content elements such as words and images, in communication networks at these various levels of analysis. Over time, layers of the network screw in and out of each other, based on shifting sentiments and other causes of cross-level structural inversions.