Chapter 3.

Social Networks and The Network Society

3.1 Social Networks
3.1.1 Definition of Social Networks
3.1.2 Types of Social Networks
3.1.3 Social Capital
3.2 Network Economy
3.3 Network Society and Social Capital
3.4 Virtual Social Networks

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 3.1.1 Definition of Social Networks
• “Networking” is an activity or process that has
always been with us.
• Simply put, it is the act of reaching out and
connecting to others.
• In this way, we have always been networking—
sharing information between individuals that
provides enough value to justify maintaining the
relationship.
• Some of these behaviors are purely serviceable
(there is some gain to be had), whereas other
behaviors are more focused on the socializing
aspects of the relationship itself. 2
• “Traditional” Networking
• Although networking actions have always been a part of human
behavior,
• the term was first used by sociologists as they described the “web” of
relationships in societies.
• This extended the metaphor of the “basics” of society that many people
were comfortable with in the preindustrial days.
• It illustrated the understanding that people are fundamentally
connected and mutually dependent as part of their identity.
• This behavior might come more easily to some than others, but it can
be seen and learned by almost anyone.
• In a business setting, these activities include sharing or searching for
information, knowledge, and expertise, as well as the more purposeful
behavior of collaboration, which generally assumes that there is a
mutual goal involved.
• A social network is the web of relationships that connect people
together. 3
• According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, social network is defined as an
online services or site through which people create and maintain
interpersonal relationships.
• Social Networking Services (SNS) refers here to a wide-range of rapidly
developing services tools and practices.
• This is an outcome of the networking behaviors mentioned previously.
• The term “social” is used to distinguish it from other types of networks
such as computer or phone networks.
• This type of relationship could include friendships (purely social), the
flow of information or goods between people, business connections, and
mentoring, to name just a few.
• Most people will find themselves involved in these overlapping networks
at some time or another, participating in these networks for various
reasons.
• Unintentionally, social media and social networks are used
interchangeably.
– But, social media is a forms of electronic communication where as social
networks is the creation and maintenance of relationships. 4
• One set of relationships might be defined by current job roles,
another might be based on trusted relationships for advice and
counsel, other networks might be a loose connection based on a
common interest, and finally a network might be devoted to purely
socializing with friends within the workplace.
• Supporting and maintaining these networks, therefore, has to enable
the underlying purpose of the network, as well as strike a balance
between the inclusiveness of being in a network and the
exclusiveness of being an outsider.
• Networks can be very dynamic or stable.
• Individuals are continually joining or leaving networks based on
changing interests.
• On the other hand, many networks are represented in communities
that outlast the organizational structures.
• Many social networking behaviors are common to these two
different approaches, formal and informal.
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 What do people do on social networking?
• People use social networking services for countless
activities, however the most common uses are:
Connecting with existing networks, making and
developing friendships/contacts
Represent themselves online and create and develop an
online presence
Viewing content and/or finding information
Creating and customizing profiles
Authoring and uploading your own content
Adding and sharing third-party content
Posting messages – public and private
Collaborating with other people
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 3.1.2 Types of Social Networks
• This section attempts to order the current range of
SNS available and it’s important to remember that
services differ and may be characterized by more
than one category.
• Users are also quite happy to challenge the
intended use of platforms to suit their own
interests.
• Educators setting up private groups in order to
make use of collaborative space and tools are a
good example of this.

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1. Profile-based SNS:
• Profile-based services are primarily organized around
members‘ profile pages.
• This may include the profiles[i.e outline of something] of
events, companies, even political parties.
• Bebo, Facebook and MySpace, are all good examples of this.
• Users develop their space in various ways, and can often
contribute to each other’s spaces –
• typically leaving text, embedded content or links to external
content through message walls, comment or evaluation tools.
• Users often include third party content (in the form of
‘widgets’ [a component of a user interface with a particular
function]) in order to enhance their profiles, or as a way of
including information from other web services and SNS.
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• Facebook is a social network originally designed for
college students to interact with other students.
• Facebook was created in 2004 by former Harvard students
Mark Zuckerberg and Chris Hughes.
• Facebook users can interact with one another by sending
messages, sharing pictures, and creating groups of
interest or classes.
• MySpace was created by Tom Anderson and Chris
DeWolfe in 2003
• MySpace user creates a profile that describes themselves,
users can view each others profiles and friend one
another
• You can send messages, share pictures and create
common interest groups with other users. 9
2. Content-based SNS:
• The content based social networks are those platforms where
you can create common content while also allowed to edit or
complete others uploads and you share mostly real contents.
• Examples:
– Video sharing (YouTube)
– Photo sharing (Flickr)
– Music sharing (last.fm, Spotify)
– Link sharing (http://goog.gl)
• In these services, the user's profile remains an important way
of organizing connections, but plays a secondary role to the
posting of content.
• Photo-sharing site Flickr is an example of this type of service,
one where groups and comments are based around pictures.
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• YouTube allows its registered users to post videos
on the site for not only it’s registered users to
view, but anyone on the internet to view.
• And last.fm, where the content is created by
software that monitors and represents the music
that users listen to.
• In the latter case, the content is primarily the
user's activity – the act of listening to audio files.

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3. White-label social networking services:
• Some times it can be referred to as private, corporate, or internal
social networks.
• Its main purpose is to promote the goals of the organization that
owns the SN.
• Platforms such as People Aggregator and Ning, which launched in
2004, offer members a different model.
• These sites offer members the opportunity to create and join
communities.
• Users can create their own “mini-MySpaces” – small-scale social
networking sites that support specific interests, events or activities.
• Setting up and running a SNS also means increased responsibility
and liability of the creator or host for on-site activity.

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4. Multi-user virtual environments :
• Sites such as Second Life and World of Warcraft –
online virtual environments – allow users to interact
with each other’s avatars.
• (An avatar is a virtual representation of the site
member.)
• Although the users have profile cards, their functional
profiles are the characters they customize or build and
control.
• Friends lists are usually private and not publicly shared
or displayed.
• For example: Multi-user virtual environments for
international classroom collaboration for teaching and
learning in Second Life. 13
5. Mobile social networking services:
• Many social networking sites, for example
MySpace, FB and Twitter, offer mobile phone
versions of their services, allowing members to
interact with their friends via their phones.
• Increasingly, too, there are mobile-led and
mobile-only communities, which include profiles
and information-sharing just as with web-based
social networking services.
• MYUBO, for example, allows users to share and
view video over mobile networks.

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6. Micro-blogging/presence updates:
• Micro-blogging services such as Twitter and Jaiku allow you to publish
short (140 characters, including spaces) messages publicly or within
contact groups.
• Twitter, more than any other SN site is known as micro-blogging site
because of its restrictions on members’ character count.
• By design, users are limited in the amount they can share.
• Other SN sites like FB and instantgram have come to be known as micro-
blogging site as well, though you can write much more in either of those
environments than Twitter allows.
• These services are designed to work as mobile services, but are popularly
used on the web as well.
• Many services offer status updates – short messages that can be updated
to let people know what mood you are in or what you are doing.
• These can be checked within the site, read as text messages on phones,
or exported to be read or displayed elsewhere.
• They engage users in constantly updated conversation and contact with
their online networks. 15
7. Social search:
• Social search is a web search that makes use of the social graph of the
user who is conducting the search.
• Social search is a behavior of retrieving and searching on a social
searching engine that mainly searches user-generated content such as
news, videos and images related search queries on social media like
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and etc.
• Social search engines are an important web development which utilize
the popularity of social networking services.
• There are various kinds of social search engine, but sites like Wink and
Spokeo generate results by searching across the public profiles of
multiple social networking sites, allowing the creation of web-based
dossiers [a collection of documents about a person or subject] on
individuals.
• This type of people search cuts across the traditional boundaries of
social networking site membership, although any data retrieved should
already be in the public domain. 16
 3.1.3 Social Capital
• Social capital refers to the resources available to people
and entities because of their networks.
• Social capital is an asset based on social relations.
• These relations are structured by networks and norms.
• The assets we posses by good value of the social relations
that we develop and maintain, and the shared values which
arise from those networks, make up Social Capital (SC).
• Human creates connection with other humans, and those
connection are used in several ways.
• They can generate friendship and a great deal of happiness.
• However, the focus of SC is on how social relations help us
to accomplish and produce things.

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• SC is the value that comes from social networks, or
grouping of people, which allow individuals to
achieve things they could not on their own.
• Below are some of the ways that SC can benefit
communities:
– Sharing information and resources
You tell your friend about the delicious new piza place
downtown
– Providing assistance
A group of cancer survivors form an online support group
together
– Establishing trust
A stranger returns your wallet after finding it in a restaurant
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• Examples of social capital:
• There are many examples of SC since it relates to human
sociability-our ability to work together, to solve complex
problems, and to form the organization that make up
society.
• Examples of SC are any benefits that is derived from
society and our interaction with members of our society.
• Consider if you were a alone, living completely alone,
what difficulties or challenges would you have compared
to your current life in society?
• What benefits would you not have access to?
• This can be a good way to think about the examples of
SC.
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• SC can give us access to resources and these resources
can be any form of capital(physical, human (in the form
of skills, expertise, knowledge or information), social
through a friend of a friend, etc)
• It is useful to consider examples at different levels of SC:
individual, group and societal levels.
• Individual level examples of SC:
– You may borrow tools from your neighbors for your odd jobs
and they may borrow items from you. This is called reciprocity,
and is a pattern of behavior that is established through your
social relationships and based on trust and respect.
– Your friend may be landscaper and be able to tell you which
plants would be best for your garden.
– Getting job from your brother’s friend’s sister.
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• Group level examples of SC:
– The creation of rules and guidelines that provide the
basis for behavior and give members the confidence
to act to pro-social or collaborative ways.
• Societal level examples of SC:
– The institutions created to meet basic and
fundamental needs for production, reproduction,
regulation and coordination.
– Language: the ability to communicate with natural
language

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 3.2 Network Economy
• The way we interact both in our personal and business lives
is changing rapidly.
• We have reached a point of hyper connectivity where we
are always connected and always on.
• The rise of cloud and the Internet of Things (IoT) has helped
facilitate this shift.
• In business, we witnessing the maturation of a globalized
network economy.
• Thus, network economy refers to the interlinking of
business processes and economic activity through the use
of IT.
• This connectedness helps an enterprises become more
collaborative, intelligent, responsive and efficient than ever
before. 22
• There are three characteristics of network
economy:
– Everything is digitalized and tracked from our
wearable devices to sensors [device which
detects or measures a physical property] in
everyday products.
– Everything is connected: from our cars to our
homes to inventory in warehouses
– Everything is ready to be shared, our content
and data are all part of global network to the
extent we decide to share it.
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• In networks, the preferred option is often creating gratitude
and reliance over the extensive haul.
• The relationship between them is often very long lasting and
stable.
• The stability of these links allows companies to concentrate
on their core business.
• If these partnerships break down, the effects can be very
difficult.
Most of the time failures handicap only the partners of the
broken link.
• Occasionally, however, they send waves through the whole
economy.
• Macroeconomic failures can throw entire nations into deep
financial disorder, while failures in corporate partnerships can
severely damage the jewels of the new economy. 24
 3.3 Network Society and Social Capital

• Over the last two decades of 21st century there is a massive

change in the process of structural transformation of societies.
• This is because of the emergence of new technological paradigm and the
pattern of new media- we already talk about in the earlier discussion.
• Internet was the crucial technology in this process.
• On the internet interpersonal, organizational, and mass communication
come together.
• Everyone become linked to one another and have access to information
and communication with one another constantly.
• Internet brought the ―whole world into the hands.
• This is how the concept of Network Society (NS) is gradually come into
sight.
• The term ―NS first approached in sociology in the late 20 th c.
• Manuel Castells, a Spanish sociologist, brought the concept better known
through his several works related to information society, communication
and globalization.
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• According to Castells, NS has a new social structure and process
which is ensured by ICTs based on microelectronics.
• In a NS, it is with the help of computer networks that information is
created, processed and transmitted, building on the knowledge
accumulated in the network hubs.
• The NS concept emphasizes the form and organization of
information processing and exchange.
• So the NS can be defined as a social formation with an infrastructure
of social and media networks enabling its prime mode of
organization at all levels (individual, group/organizational and
societal).
• Increasingly, these networks link all units or parts of this
formation (individuals, groups and organizations).
• So we can explain NS as all it is electronically connected by ICTs and
coded by culture.

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• The definition of social capital in relation to
networks, is as “the networks of social interaction
and the norms of reciprocity that allow individual
and the community to assume a habit of civic
collaboration aimed at common goals”.
• This definition has the double advantage of treating
social capital as a network concept and it introduces
the fundamental element of ‘commonality’ which
puts in the sphere of public goods.

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• Social capital in the network society advanced
towards the notion of “network capital (NC)”.
• Wellman writes that “the transformation of
national and global societies into network
societies suggests the usefulness of thinking of
social capital as a product of personal community
networks as well as of formally institutionalized
groups”.
• Communities are no longer defined only by place,
but also by interest, becoming organized into
social networks and the resulting social capital is
network based.
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• NC could then be understood as a measure of the
differentiated value in the information age that
communities structured as social networks generate on
the basis of digital networks for themselves, for others
and for society as a whole.
• In these context, network capital can become a valuable
asset for human development for two main reasons:
– First, because of the earlier mentioned importance of SC for
human development and NC being but one expression of SC in
the information age
– Second, because development cooperation is meant to be an
accelerator of human development process and the generation
and investment of NC has potential to significantly contribute
to renewed models of development cooperation in the NS
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• Wellman (2001) describes a network capital as the
form of social capital that makes resources
available through interpersonal ties.
• Network capital can be characterized through a
combination of attributes, only some of which may
normally be manifested concurrently in a given
community:
– It is the result of cooperation via electronic networks,
and in turn fosters the habit of such cooperation. This
cooperation includes sharing of information and the
use of computer mediated-communication but goes
further towards group work, the creation of specific
products, and the achievement of set of objectives.
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• It is created by communities of interest, where
membership is based on personal interest, skills,
background/experience and sharing of common
purpose.
• It is generated by people organized as virtual
community who share a communal cyber-place as for
example through a simple e-discussion list, a suite of
group ware applications, or a sophisticated 2.0 virtual
environment like Second Life.
• It has been particularly concerned with knowledge
generation, and thus add a special value to knowledge
intensive processes (such as those related to Scientific,
R&D, policy-making or development cooperation).
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 3.4 Virtual Social Networks

• Virtuality has been undergoing rapid and fundamental

changes.
• As technology changes, so too have its applications and our
uses of and experiences with them have changed as well.
• The emergence of new technologies such as Web 2.0
technologies offers individuals opportunities for new ways of
interacting, playing, working, and learning, and companies
new ways for promoting and advertising their products and
services and interacting with their customers in general.
• The new possibilities are exciting, but there are uncertainties
and anxieties too which affect individuals and organizations as
well as societies in general.
• It is within this context, one of simultaneous excitement and
anxiety, that we discuss virtual social networks in this sub
section. 32
• Virtual Reality (VR): an artificial environment that is created with
software and presented to the user in a such a way that the user
suspends belief and accepts it as a real environment.
• On a computer, virtual reality is primarily experienced through two
of five senses: sight and sound.
• “VR is unlike any technology before because it allows the amazing
feeling of presence- the feeling that you are really there with
someone in the same space, even when you are actually far apart”.
• Virtual social network is a social structure consisting of a set of
individuals who interact commonly online, together with the
particular relationships or bind or for personal as well as shared
goals.
• For example, an email distribution list operates on an
informational level.
• Avatar: an image that represent you in online games, chat rooms,
etc and that you can move around the screen.
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