Social Networks

A social network is a style of organization of social relationships characterized by highly mobile, interconnected links between individuals or groups. Such connections may take many forms, from business relationships based on status to relationships between friends. Social networks exist in flux as new nodal [Page 885]connections are formed and those rarely used become weaker. No formal division exists between one network and another, nor does a network possess a center. Networks provide resources that may be emotional, material, informational, or financial in nature. A network can be utilized to obtain a job, get information, spread news, organize protest movements, or make romantic connections. One's positioning in the system of social networks, therefore, has a large effect on the span of an individual's power in a contemporary informational society.

Initial conceptions of social networks appear in the works of such early theorists of modernity as Emile Durkheim and Georg Simmel, who noticed increased instrumental interpersonal encounters at the turn of the 20th century. In the 1930s, social network analysis evolved as a means of quantifying and mapping emerging social networks, becoming a subfield of work on social ties in the social sciences. Decades later, the meaning and importance of the social network grew and changed dramatically when social scientists identified a qualitative and significant difference in the ordering of social connections in the postmodern era. This change occurred with the revolution in information technology, including the widespread use of the Internet, cell phone communications, and the “time-space compression” of the new global economy. As the speed and connection of social interactions increased worldwide, social relations increasingly took the form of the network.

Unlike traditional ties to local communities, networks exist not in terms of physical space alone, but they can continue uninterrupted between cyberspace and actual space. Because of the increased speed, mobility, and anonymity such a system provides, networked groups have an advantage in collective political activity. In the era of globalization, social networks are important in shaping the actions of transnational activists, who use this technology for communication and organizing across national boundaries. Networked telecommunications via cell phone and text message, for example, help protesters communicate information during political demonstrations, such as warning each other about the location of police. Likewise, terrorist groups rely on elaborate social networks to help spread messages below the level of government radar.

Networks also become increasingly important in a technological society because they provide access to remote and highly specified information from human, living sources often more trusted than official information sources. For example, an individual might ask friends if they know anyone who has ever lived in Portland when considering a move. This same individual might also check Internet chat rooms for Portland residents to find out what living in Portland is like. The social network can thus provide a level of information that other official sources, in this case, a guidebook to Portland or population statistics, cannot provide.

Social scientists, theorists, and activists are divided on the meaning and value of social networks. Some argue that social networks represent an increased superficiality in human relationships, that bonds between people have become more temporary, increasingly utilitarian, and less emotionally meaningful in contemporary society. To others, social networks represent a dangerous move away from the close, informal ties of civil society, instead creating more mobile bonds in which individuals weigh the potential benefits against the costs of each networked social relation.

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