More or less guanxi: Trust is 60% network context, 10% individual difference
Publication date: July 2018Source: Social Networks, Volume 54Author(s): Ronald S. Burt, Yanjie Bian, Sonja OpperAbstractThe strong ties known in China as guanxi can be distinguished by a high level of trust relatively independent of the surrounding social structure. Using network data from a stratified probability sample of 700 entrepreneurs citing 4664 contacts, we study guanxi relative to other relations to learn how much individual differences such as well-being, business differences, political participation and demographic factors matter for the guanxi distinction. Two findings stand out: First, the connection between ...
Source: Social Networks - July 5, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Using modern methods for missing data analysis with the social relations model: A bridge to social network analysis
This study demonstrates how to accommodate missing round-robin data using Bayesian data augmentation, including how to incorporate partially observed covariates as auxiliary correlates or as substantive predictors. We discuss how data augmentation opens the possibility to fit SRM to network ties (potentially without boundaries) rather than round-robin data. An illustrative application explores the relationship between sorority members’ self-reported body comparisons and perceptions of friends’ body talk. (Source: Social Networks)
Source: Social Networks - July 5, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
A new scalable leader-community detection approach for community detection in social networks
Publication date: July 2018Source: Social Networks, Volume 54Author(s): Sara Ahajjam, Mohamed El Haddad, Hassan BadirAbstractStudying social influence in networks is crucial to understand how behavior spreads. An interesting number of theories were elaborated to analyze how innovations and trends get adopted. The traditional view assumes that a minority of members in a society possess qualities that make them exceptionally persuasive in spreading ideas to others. These exceptional individuals drive trends on behalf of the majority of ordinary people. They are loosely described as being informed, respected, and well connect...
Source: Social Networks - July 5, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Centrality without indices: Partial rankings and rank probabilities in networks
We present an alternative approach to assess centrality in networks which does not rely on traditional indices. The work is based on neighborhood-inclusion, a partial ranking inducing relation of nodes, which was shown to be preserved by many existing centrality indices. As such, it can serve as the shared basis for centrality in networks. We argue that evaluating this partial ranking by itself allows for a generic assessment of centrality, avoiding several pitfalls that can arise when indices are applied. Additionally, we illustrate how to derive further partial rankings and introduce some probabilistic methods to, among ...
Source: Social Networks - July 5, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Solidarity as a byproduct of professional collaboration: Social support and trust in a coworking space
This article investigates solidarity arising from economic exchange, by studying a multiplex network of collaboration, trust and social support. After a qualitative pre-study, we performed a full-network survey on a group of independent professionals sharing a coworking space and occasionally collaborating with each other. By running multivariate Exponential Random Graph Models, we showed that successful collaboration might not determine expectations of social support. However, these relationships were related to business-based trust ties, which were predicted by collaboration. Our results suggest that solidarity can emerg...
Source: Social Networks - July 5, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Effects of data quality in an animal trade network and their impact on centrality parameters
Publication date: July 2018Source: Social Networks, Volume 54Author(s): Kathrin Büttner, Jennifer Salau, Joachim KrieterAbstractDealing with the analysis of animal trade networks always faces the challenge of imperfect data sets mainly due to country borders or different producer communities. In the present study, the network robustness, i.e. the point at which false positive nodes or edges may influence the network structure and the results of the centrality parameters, were analysed for a pork supply chain of a producer community in Northern Germany. The analysis of animal trade networks mainly focusses on disease trans...
Source: Social Networks - July 5, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The causal effect of social capital on income: A new analytic strategy
This study identifies three groups of job seekers in terms of the channels used to search for jobs: the formal channel involving only official procedures to obtain a job, the informal channel using only social contacts to obtain a job, and the joint channel leveraging both social contacts and official procedures. The analysis of a national sample survey of China shows that joint channel users, due to their relatively higher level of social capital, not only make more job search attempts but also obtain higher income than formal channel users. Meanwhile, joint channel users, because of their relative advantages in both huma...
Source: Social Networks - July 5, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Are bridging ties really advantageous? An experimental test of their advantage in a competitive social learning context
Publication date: July 2018Source: Social Networks, Volume 54Author(s): Eva Vriens, Rense CortenAbstractDespite the widespread acceptance of the claim that bridging ties help to obtain profitable outcomes, its underlying mechanisms remain understudied. Starting from a multi-armed bandit problem, we tested the bridging tie hypothesis experimentally by studying the outcomes of social learning for different network positions (in terms of local clustering and closeness centrality) with and without competition. We found a positive effect of bridging ties, but only within one’s direct network (i.e., when local clustering is lo...
Source: Social Networks - July 5, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Alternative estimation methods for identifying contagion effects in dynamic social networks: A latent-space adjusted approach
Publication date: July 2018Source: Social Networks, Volume 54Author(s): Ran XuAbstractContagion effects, also known as peer effects or social influence process, have become more and more central to social science, especially with the availability of longitudinal social network data. However, contagion effects are usually difficult to identify, as they are often entangled with other factors, such as homophily in the selection process, the individual’s preference for the same social settings, etc. Methods currently available either do not solve these problems or require strong assumptions. Following Shalizi and Thomas (201...
Source: Social Networks - July 5, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Statistical adjustment of network degree in respondent-driven sampling estimators: Venue attendance as a proxy for network size among young MSM
Publication date: July 2018Source: Social Networks, Volume 54Author(s): Kayo Fujimoto, Ming Cao, Lisa M. Kuhns, Dennis Li, John A. SchneiderAbstractWe introduce a new venue-informed network degree measure, which we applied to respondent-driven sampling (RDS) estimators. Using data collected from 746 young MSM in 2014–2016 in Chicago, IL, and Houston, TX, we estimated the population seroprevalence of HIV and syphilis and risk/protective behaviors, using RDS estimates with self-reported network size as a standard degree measure as well as our proposed venue-informed degree measure. The results indicate that the venue-infor...
Source: Social Networks - July 5, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Dynamic social media affiliations among UK politicians
Publication date: July 2018Source: Social Networks, Volume 54Author(s): Iain S. Weaver, Hywel Williams, Iulia Cioroianu, Matthew Williams, Travis Coan, Susan BanducciAbstractInter-personal affiliations and coalitions are an important part of politicians’ behaviour, but are often difficult to observe. Since an increasing amount of political communication now occurs online, data from online interactions may offer a new toolkit to study ties between politicians; however, the methods by which robust insights can be derived from online data require further development, especially around the dynamics of political social networ...
Source: Social Networks - July 5, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Individuals’ power and their social network accuracy: A situated cognition perspective
Publication date: July 2018Source: Social Networks, Volume 54Author(s): Joshua E. Marineau, Giuseppe (Joe) Labianca, Daniel J. Brass, Stephen P. Borgatti, Patrizia VecchiAbstractIndividuals differ in how accurately they perceive their social environment, but research and theory provide conflicting predictions on whether powerful people are more or less accurate than others. Drawing on social network theory and the situated cognition theory of power, we examine the relationship between individuals’ formal and informal power and their perceptual accuracy of social network relationships. We propose that individuals’ perce...
Source: Social Networks - July 5, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Network visualization and problem-solving support: A cognitive fit study
This study examines the relative effectiveness of four different social network representations for improving human problem-solving accuracy and speed: node-link diagrams, adjacency matrices, tables, and text. Results suggest that visual network representations improve problem-solving accuracy and speed, compared with text. Among the visual representations, tables produced superior problem-solving outcomes for symbolic tasks and link-node diagrams produced superior problem-solving outcomes for spatial tasks. These results partially support a cognitive fit model of problem-solving support. There is not “one best way” to...
Source: Social Networks - July 5, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Embedding time in positions: Temporal measures of centrality for social network analysis
Publication date: July 2018Source: Social Networks, Volume 54Author(s): Lucia Falzon, Eric Quintane, John Dunn, Garry RobinsAbstractDigital data enable researchers to obtain fine-grained temporal information about social interactions. However, positional measures used in social network analysis (e.g., degree centrality, reachability, betweenness) are not well suited to these time-stamped interaction data because they ignore sequence and time of interactions. While new temporal measures have been developed, they consider time and sequence separately. Building on formal algebra, we propose three temporal equivalents to posit...
Source: Social Networks - July 5, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Socio-material network analysis: A mixed method study of five European artistic collectives
Publication date: July 2018Source: Social Networks, Volume 54Author(s): Nikita BasovAbstractIn this paper, I argue that we can better understand the relationship between social structure and materiality by combining qualitative analysis of practices in shared physical space with statistical analysis. Drawing on the two-mode approach, I treat social and material structures together with the relationship between them as a two-level socio-material network. In a mixed method study, formalized ethnographic data on such networks in five European artistic collectives are subjected to multilevel exponential random graph modelling....
Source: Social Networks - July 5, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
