Do informal social ties connecting inventors across distant places promote knowledge flows between them? To measure ties, we use a new and direct index of connectedness regions based on aggregate Facebook friendships. We well-established identification strategy that relies matching inventor citations with from examiners. Moreover, isolate the specific effect connections, above beyond formal pro...

The popularity of theWeb has allowed individuals to communicate and interact with each other on a global scale: people connect both to close friends and acquaintances, creating ties that can bridge otherwise separated groups of people. Recent evidence suggests that spatial distance is still affecting social links established on online platforms, with online ties preferentially connecting closer...

Centrality – Refers to the number of ties one has to others in a network. Those with more ties may have more access to resources contained within the network. Closure – Refers to the interconnections members have with one another, that is, the social ties among the network members that are historical and bridging. Density – Refers to the number and strength of ties among individuals within a so...

In Asian nations, family ties are considered important. However, it is not clear what happens among older people with no such ties. To investigate the association, we used longitudinal data from the Aichi Gerontological Evaluation Study (AGES) project. Functionally independent older people at baseline (N = 14,088) in 10 municipalities were followed from 2003 to 2013. Social ties were assessed b...

 Modeling Mutual Influence Between Social Actions and Social Ties Xiaofeng Yu, Jun Qing Xie HP Laboratories HPL-2014-18 Social Actions and Social Ties; Mutual Influence In online social media, social action prediction and social tie discovery are two fundamental tasks for social network analysis. Traditionally, they were considered as separate tasks and solved independently. In this paper, we ...

This article presents findings from a research study (Trace, 2004) that looked at a particular aspect of human information behavior: children’s information creation in a classroom setting. In the portion of the study described here, naturalism and ethnomethodology are used as theoretical frameworks to investigate informal documents as an information genre. Although previous studies have conside...

Theoretical approaches as well as empirical results in the area of social capital accumulation on social networking sites suggest that weak ties/bridging versus strong ties/bonding social capital should be distinguished and that while bonding social capital is connected to emotional support, bridging social capital entails the provision of information. Additionally, recent studies imply the not...

This research considers how different features of informal networks affect knowledge transfer. As a complement to previous research that has emphasized the dyadic tie strength component of informal networks, we focus on how network structure influences the knowledge transfer process. We propose that social cohesion around a relationship affects the willingness and motivation of individuals to i...

Economic sociologists and white-collar criminologists offer competing predictions about the outcomes of socially embedded transactions. Economic sociologists stress the protective and beneficial role of social networks. Their evidence shows that social ties improve transaction outcomes. White-collar criminologists focus on the harmful and exploitative role of social networks. Their evidence sho...

The social networks literature suggests that ties must be maintained to retain value. In contrast, we show that reconnecting dormant ties—former ties, now out of touch—can be extremely useful. Our research prompted Executive MBA students to consult their dormant contacts about an important work project; outcomes compared favorably to those of their current ties. In addition, reconnecting previo...