Abstract. This paper provides a mathematical explanation for the phenomenon of “triadic closure” so often seen in social networks. It appears to be a natural consequence when network change is constrained to be continuous. The concept of chordless cycles in the network’s “irreducible spine” is used in the analysis of the network’s dynamic behavior. A surprising result is that as networks underg...

This paper explores why actors may develop different interpretations of a new concept. It leverages work from cognitive science to define this interpretive process in terms of creating coherence: fitting the new concept into the existing conceptual schema. We argue that variation in conceptualization results in part from cognitively cohering the concept in different ways. We appeal to the socia...

The literature on social networks argues that they are clustered because agents like closing triangles (since this facilitates cooperation or increases match quality). However, in certain circumstances, network clustering may arise even though agents actually do not like redundancy in connections. We propose a theoretical model of the formation of new research collaborations that we estimate on...

Complex systems – when treated as systems accessible to natural sciences – pose tremendous requirements on data. Usually these requirements obstruct a scientific understanding of social phenomena on scientific grounds. Due to new developments in IT and collective human behavior, new dimensions of data sources are beginning to open up. Here we report on a complete data set of an entire society, ...

Research in computer-mediated communication has consistently asserted that Facebook use is positively correlated with social capital. This research has drawn primarily on Williams’ (2006) bridging and bonding scales as well as behavioral attributes such as civic engagement. Yet, as social capital is inherently a structural construct, it is surprising that so little work has been done relating s...

A community computing centre was established late 2001 in a city council high-rise apartment block in Wellington, New Zealand’s capital city. The centre was one of five computing hubs (centres) of the Smart Newtown Project, established with economic and social inclusion objectives, in the lower socio-economic suburb of Newtown. The project aim was to reduce inequalities of access to information...

A community computing center was established in late 2001 in a city coimcil high-rise apartment block in Wellington, New Zealand's capital city. The center was one of five computing hubs (centers) of the Smart Newtown Project, established with economic and social inclusion objectives, in the lower socio-economic suburb of Newtown. The project aim was to reduce inequalities of access to informat...

This study examines an alternative function of information sharing – social construction of meaning. Drawing on social construction, social interaction, and task closure theories, we explored the influence of both the media environment in which students are situated and the medium that group members choose to communicate with one another on the intricate relationships among breadth of informati...

We move beyond the performance returns of individuals’ direct network connections to study the effects of “secondhand” social capital, i.e., from the networks of one’s contacts. We propose that certain colleagues may be more valuable to one’s job performance than others when their spillovers of novel information combine with spillovers of the cooperation needed to obtain that novelty. In a stud...

Traditional network generation models attempt to replicate global structural properties (degree distribution, average distance, clustering coefficient, communities, etc.) through synthetic link formation mechanisms such as triadic closure or preferential attachment. In this work, we study the evolution of a very big communication network coming from mobile telephony and we analyse the link form...