Role of Context in Social Networks

This paper proposes a context-based approach of social networks and virtual communities in the enterprise area. We point out that making context explicit it is possible to provide a global picture of the main aspects of social networks. A first result of this study is that the explicit consideration of contexts—especially shared contexts—could improve notably the collaborative-work processes in an enterprise. A second result shows the interest of simultaneously considering the paradigms of context and social network when IT is at the core of the enterprise. A third result is to point out that different types of context account for the flux of information between groups as well as inside each group. Finally, a virtual community can be considered as a contextualization of a social network, a kind of “chunk of