February 21, 2012 at 14:17A single look at communities and social networks
- Transfer
From the translator. The author of this publication - Michael Wu ( by Michael the Wu ), a leading analyst company by Lithium , specializing in the study of social interactions, and online communities.
Earlier, I talked about the difference between communities and social networks, as well as about those special roles that they play in building , developing and maintaining relationships between people. In these publications, we analyzed the structure of communities and social networks separately. In reality, however, they coexist and intersect with each other. At any given time, we are part of many communities and are simultaneously connected through a social network to both people from these communities and people outside of them.
Today I’ll try to give a unified view of communities and social networks so that we can understand how these two social structures fit together. This publication is a bit more abstract and theoretical than the previous ones, but I believe that it will provide a new perspective and will be useful for practical work with social media.
As we found out, most of the strong relationships in our personal social network (or simply in our personal network) were developed within communities that once turned out to be part of our lives. Figure 1 illustrates the dynamics of a person (let his name be Bob, in the figure he is indicated by a red dot), joining the community (indicated by a yellow oval).
Based on his personal experience, everyone will confirm the fact that when someone joins the community, his personal network does not necessarily join with him. Indeed, it is so: our friends, as a rule, do not follow us everywhere, in any case, they do not do it instantly, and certainly not every one of them does this. Why it happens? The main reason is that people have different interests, supported by different communities in which they participate. By joining the community and interacting with its other participants, Bob creates weak connections (dashed lines in the figure). If interactions were desired by both parties, and for their development for a certain time there was a suitable environment, then some of these emerging weak ties grow into strong bonds,
As you can see, it is entirely possible to have a social network within the community. In fact, social networks naturally develop in communities that provide their users with a rich environment for participation and interaction. Participants who put a lot of their time and energy into the community, as a rule, have a more extensive network (like orange dots in the figure) than new participants (pink dots in the figure), which have a much smaller number of connections. But this is only part of Bob’s entire social network, this is his social network tied to a specific community.
In reality, the picture is much more complex, because Bob, like most other people, does not belong to only one community. Most people at any given time are part of several communities at once.Figure 2 illustrates this situation in which Bob does participate in three other communities (blue, green, and orange). Please note that within each of these communities, in fact, the same complex social structure is located as in the yellow community, we just hid these unnecessary details.
Although the global social network covers the whole earth, our personal network, which includes only our direct contacts, is much smaller. This means that we are able to analyze Bob's network in finer detail. Focusing on his personal network, we will hide all communications that are not directly related to him. As we agreed a little earlier, Bob had just joined the yellow community, before that he knew no one here and had not yet managed to build any long-term relationships with anyone. Therefore, if we hide the details and look only at Bob’s personal network, we will see that he has no connections in the yellow community.
However, Bob already participates in three other communities, and we can analyze his connections built by him in them. Figure 3shows all of Bob’s friends, as well as all the communities to which they belong (black solid lines indicate direct connections with Bob). We see that Bob has friends in the blue, green, and orange communities. Moreover, one of his friends (the blue dot in the figure) shares two communities with him (blue and orange). Please note that Bob also has friends who do not share any communities with him. They belong to the pink, purple and blue community, respectively. Where did he get these friends?
When we grow up, or when our life changes, it is natural for us to leave some communities and join others. But since with the help of a social network we maintain relationships that we built earlier in communities, it is logical to suddenly find connections with people located outside of our current communities. The above picture means that Bob left the pink, purple and blue communities at one time, or his friends left their community with Bob and subsequently joined pink, purple and blue.
Now that we understand the structure of the communities around Bob, we can begin to fill out the structure of his social network. Figure 3 is incomplete because it does not show how Bob's friends are interconnected. If Bob's friends did not know each other, this picture would be correct. However, this is unrealistic, because social dynamics (for example, the rule of the closed triad , or the property of homophilia ), which controls the formation of connections, as a rule, creates cliques among friends.
This reasoning leads us to Figure 4, which shows the structure of Bob’s personal social network, and also demonstrates how it combines with the structure of the communities around him. Black lines indicate Bob’s direct relationship, and gray lines indicate the relationship between his friends. Together, they make up Bob’s personal network. We see how the different communities that own Bob or his friends are embedded in the structure of his personal social network. Communities can be found not only within the personal network, but they also exist in the global social network. This will become more apparent to us if we are aware of the fact that the global network includes each of us in this world. Therefore, any community, consisting of a subset of the world's population, must inevitably be located within the global network.
So what have we learned today? Although the topological structures of communities and social networks are very different, and each social structure has a unique function in human history, they are closely intertwined, but in fact complement each other.
Earlier, I talked about the difference between communities and social networks, as well as about those special roles that they play in building , developing and maintaining relationships between people. In these publications, we analyzed the structure of communities and social networks separately. In reality, however, they coexist and intersect with each other. At any given time, we are part of many communities and are simultaneously connected through a social network to both people from these communities and people outside of them.
Today I’ll try to give a unified view of communities and social networks so that we can understand how these two social structures fit together. This publication is a bit more abstract and theoretical than the previous ones, but I believe that it will provide a new perspective and will be useful for practical work with social media.
Social networks within communities
As we found out, most of the strong relationships in our personal social network (or simply in our personal network) were developed within communities that once turned out to be part of our lives. Figure 1 illustrates the dynamics of a person (let his name be Bob, in the figure he is indicated by a red dot), joining the community (indicated by a yellow oval).
Based on his personal experience, everyone will confirm the fact that when someone joins the community, his personal network does not necessarily join with him. Indeed, it is so: our friends, as a rule, do not follow us everywhere, in any case, they do not do it instantly, and certainly not every one of them does this. Why it happens? The main reason is that people have different interests, supported by different communities in which they participate. By joining the community and interacting with its other participants, Bob creates weak connections (dashed lines in the figure). If interactions were desired by both parties, and for their development for a certain time there was a suitable environment, then some of these emerging weak ties grow into strong bonds,
As you can see, it is entirely possible to have a social network within the community. In fact, social networks naturally develop in communities that provide their users with a rich environment for participation and interaction. Participants who put a lot of their time and energy into the community, as a rule, have a more extensive network (like orange dots in the figure) than new participants (pink dots in the figure), which have a much smaller number of connections. But this is only part of Bob’s entire social network, this is his social network tied to a specific community.
In reality, the picture is much more complex, because Bob, like most other people, does not belong to only one community. Most people at any given time are part of several communities at once.Figure 2 illustrates this situation in which Bob does participate in three other communities (blue, green, and orange). Please note that within each of these communities, in fact, the same complex social structure is located as in the yellow community, we just hid these unnecessary details.
Communities within social networks
Although the global social network covers the whole earth, our personal network, which includes only our direct contacts, is much smaller. This means that we are able to analyze Bob's network in finer detail. Focusing on his personal network, we will hide all communications that are not directly related to him. As we agreed a little earlier, Bob had just joined the yellow community, before that he knew no one here and had not yet managed to build any long-term relationships with anyone. Therefore, if we hide the details and look only at Bob’s personal network, we will see that he has no connections in the yellow community.
However, Bob already participates in three other communities, and we can analyze his connections built by him in them. Figure 3shows all of Bob’s friends, as well as all the communities to which they belong (black solid lines indicate direct connections with Bob). We see that Bob has friends in the blue, green, and orange communities. Moreover, one of his friends (the blue dot in the figure) shares two communities with him (blue and orange). Please note that Bob also has friends who do not share any communities with him. They belong to the pink, purple and blue community, respectively. Where did he get these friends?
When we grow up, or when our life changes, it is natural for us to leave some communities and join others. But since with the help of a social network we maintain relationships that we built earlier in communities, it is logical to suddenly find connections with people located outside of our current communities. The above picture means that Bob left the pink, purple and blue communities at one time, or his friends left their community with Bob and subsequently joined pink, purple and blue.
Now that we understand the structure of the communities around Bob, we can begin to fill out the structure of his social network. Figure 3 is incomplete because it does not show how Bob's friends are interconnected. If Bob's friends did not know each other, this picture would be correct. However, this is unrealistic, because social dynamics (for example, the rule of the closed triad , or the property of homophilia ), which controls the formation of connections, as a rule, creates cliques among friends.
This reasoning leads us to Figure 4, which shows the structure of Bob’s personal social network, and also demonstrates how it combines with the structure of the communities around him. Black lines indicate Bob’s direct relationship, and gray lines indicate the relationship between his friends. Together, they make up Bob’s personal network. We see how the different communities that own Bob or his friends are embedded in the structure of his personal social network. Communities can be found not only within the personal network, but they also exist in the global social network. This will become more apparent to us if we are aware of the fact that the global network includes each of us in this world. Therefore, any community, consisting of a subset of the world's population, must inevitably be located within the global network.
Conclusion
So what have we learned today? Although the topological structures of communities and social networks are very different, and each social structure has a unique function in human history, they are closely intertwined, but in fact complement each other.
- Social networks naturally develop within communities
(for example, friends on Yelp) - Communities can exist (and often exist) within social networks
(e.g., fan pages and groups on Facebook)