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A social network is a website that allows people with similar interests to come together and share information, photos and videos.

People engaged in social networking may be doing so as a personal or a business endeavor. Those who engage on social network sites as a personal endeavor interact by using various forms of media to discuss their lives and interests. The most popular social networks for this type of familiar interaction include Facebook, Google+ and Twitter. Although these and other social networks may be used for business purposes -- especially marketing -- social networks exist specifically for enterprise social networking. Popular enterprise social network platforms include Socialcast and Yammer. Ideally, employees who are tasked with participating on social networks are provided with a social media policy so there is no ambiguity about what management considers to be acceptable use.
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What is social network? - Definition from WhatIs.com

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A social network is a website that allows people with similar interests to come together and share information, photos and videos. People engaged in social networking may be doing so as a personal or a business endeavor. Those who engage on social network sites as a personal endeavor interact by using various forms of media to discuss their lives and interests.

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Talking about the history of social networks may seem a bit far-fetched at first since they look like a relatively new phenomenon. However, in a few decades, the evolution of social networks has been such that they have modified the lifestyle of the 21st century.

In fact, as indicated in the report "Digital in 2016" by We Are Social, today 31% of the world's population are active users of social networks, which means the impressive number of 2,307 billion people. And a fact that is even more interesting to know the evolution of this phenomenon is that active users of social networks in mobile environments are already on the 27%.

There is no explicit agreement about the exact year in which we can talk about the beginning of the implementation of social networks. However, it can be noted that social tools, with the characteristics that we know today, began to appear in the 90s. However, the first signs of social networks go back to previous years.
When did social networks emerge?

The first seed of what could be considered as a social network was planted several decades ago. In 1971 the first sending of an email was made through two computers that were side by side. It was done by Ray Tomlinson.

Later, in 1978, BBS (Bulletin Board System) was exchanged through telephone lines with other users. Also, the first copies of Internet browsers were distributed during the same year through the Usenet platform.

However, it was until 1991 that Tim Berners Lee invents the HTML language, one of the essential elements to make web browsing accessible and straightforward.

From Geocities to the dotcom bubble

Years later, in 1994, what could be considered one of the first social networks, GeoCities, was launched for the first time. However, the original idea of ​​this space, which later had its clone in Tripod and Spain in Ciudad Futura, Demasiado.com, and Galeón, which is still active, was a service for creating simple web pages that lodged in certain neighborhoods according to their content.

A year later, in 1995, TheGlobe.com came to light. This social network provided the opportunity for its users to personalize their own online experiences by publishing their content and interacting with other people who had similar interests. That same year Classmates appeared, a website that helped people find their former classmates and work.

Two years later it was time for SixDegrees. A space that some researchers consider as the first social network. Or at least the one that best reflects the definition of social networks. In fact, SixDegrees offered the possibility of creating personal profiles, inviting friends or visiting the profiles of other users. However, all these social networks were far from becoming relevant spaces on the Internet in an era dominated by directories such as Yahoo or search engines such as Altavista.

On the other hand, it was the year 1997 when Instant Messenger was launched for the first time. An instant messaging program created by Microsoft Windows with which users could find the most basic chat services and contact list. He can be considered the precursor of one of the most influential social networks currently, the WhatsApp instant messaging service.

The downturn of many technology companies that had developed under the protection of the economic bonanza that was closed with the pinch of the dotcom bubble made it look like it was going to break the growth dynamics of the internet. However, it caused the appearance of new startups that were going to be part of the history of social networks.

The 2.0 Explosion in the new century

Already entering the 21st century, more precisely in the year 2002, Friendster was launched for the first time with an apparent objective: to meet new people from different circles of friends. This fact established a greater confidence between the users since they were known of their own friends. Friendster proved to be a very successful formula and reached three million users in the first months of its appearance.

A year later, in 2003, the social network that would lead to a new stage was inaugurated: My Space. This new social network was more interactive than those that had arisen until now. In MySpace you could manage from personal profiles to hosting services for photos, comments or followers, all intensely focused initially on music groups.

In countries like the United States, many indie bands used My Space to share their work, contacting directly and continuously with their fans. The social network soon understood that it had great opportunities in this regard and encouraged these practices, offering artists space where they could promote themselves.

My Space spread mainly in the United States, but in other countries, other services also began to appear with great success such as Orkut, one of the first social network attempts that Google created, in Brazil, Hyves in Holland or Mixi in Japan. Even so, the first social network that had figures of gigantic users was MySpace although its case is a clear example of how a tool of this type can go from being the queen of the dance to almost disappearing. Such learning for many in the history of social networks.

Facebook has more than 1.600 millions of users
The advent of social networks such as LinkedIn or Flickr and spaces such as Digg, WordPress or YouTube predicted a seismic on the Internet that was known until then.
Yes. In 2004 one of the most extensive social networks was created so far, Facebook. This new social network did not take long to overcome My Space as a leader regarding monthly visitors. Such was its success that My Space had to modify its strategy and finally established a new design presenting itself as an entertainment platform and not a social network.

Facebook, created by Mark Zuckerberg, originated initially with the goal of connecting the university students of Harvard. In fact, more than half of the students of the university subscribed in its first month of operation. A year after its launch, Facebook already had a presence in some 500 American universities with more than 2 million users.

In 2006 Facebook became a service open to the public. What radically changed the history of social networks. The companies also saw the great opportunity that this new service offered to advertise and get closer to their audience.

Currently, this social network is recognized as one of the most important of all time. In fact, it is still the social network with the highest number of users: 1,650 million active monthly users, as of April 27, 2016. And growing.

Twitter, a new way of making revolution

Two years later, in 2006, Twitter was born. A spin-off of Odeo, the business adventure in which the creators of Blogger had embarked after their purchase by Google. Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, and Biz Stone created a tool that was born as an internal messaging system to give news but that changed the way in which television is watched or, even, the revolutions are managed.

Twitter's limits, 140 characters since they followed SMS communications, made great the idea of a ​​microblogging network. Today there is no world-class event that is not tweeted. A milestone in the history of social networks.

In recent years, more and more social networks have been appearing that are popularized in niche audiences with different characteristics. Some of the social networks of the last five years are:

Pinterest. It is a platform to share images among users. They are organized around personal boards by subjects where they collect images according to different events or hobbies.

Tumblr. It is a microblogging platform that allows users to publish texts, videos, images, links or quotes.

Youtube. A website where users can upload and share content in the form of video. It hosts millions of music videos as well as television or videoblogs.

LinkedIn. It is a more specialized social network aimed at companies and businesses. Each user can create a profile where they freely expose their work experience and qualities. In this way, the social network puts millions of professionals in contact with each other.

Snapchat. This mobile application allows you to send files like images or videos that disappear from the recipient's mobile device within one to ten seconds after viewing it. All content is submitted through private messages.

Google deserves to be mentioned due to its attempts to create an appropriate social network. Apart from YouTube, Google tried to create a social network with Google Buzz that had little success. Later, he launched Orkut, which was only moderately successful in Brazil and ended up trying it with Google+, a social network that has already seen several modifications and doesn't take off.

The development of social networks has been impressive in a few years. The history of social networks is still in an incipient phase and has already caused thousands of changes in the world. In fact, social networks have completely changed the way people relate to each other. Communication is immediate both in personal and professional life.

Something that is accentuated in the new stage of the history of social networks that has begun to be written: mobile social networks where applications such as WhatsApp, Instagram or Snapchat begin to overshadow the giants of social networks.

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Talking about the history of social networks may seem a bit far-fetched at first since they look like a relatively new phenomenon. However, in a few decades, the evolution of social networks has been such that they have modified the lifestyle of the 21st century.

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ocial network analysis could be one promising direction to understand where mismatches might occur [29] and therefore increase the likelihood of successful on-the-ground conservation outcomes [30]

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Social network analysis in general studies the behavior of the individual at the micro level, the pattern of relationships (network structure) at the macro level, and the interactions between the two. Social networks are both the cause of and the result of individual behavior. Social networks provide and limit opportunities for individual choices, whereas at the same time individuals initiate, construct, maintain, and break up relationships and by doing so determine the global structure of the network. Which network structures and positions create strong opportunities or, on the contrary, strong constraints depends on the instrumental value of the relationships under study. Social capital is the opportunity structure created by social relationships. In social network analysis a large number of measures have been developed to characterize and compare network structures and positions in networks. Depending on what determines differences in opportunity structures, the analysis can be focused on differences in centrality, on the investigation of strongly connected clusters, of positions that are structurally equivalent in networks, or of unique positions. Other measures enable the comparison of network structures as a whole, e.g., the investigation of their effectiveness for goal achievement. In addition, statistical network models can be used for testing structure against null models, for parameter estimation and, more recently, for testing network effects of different incentive structures.

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Description

Social network analysis is carried out by means of diagramming techniques, which do vary a little depending on the actual study (Rice and Anderson 1994; Anderson 2002): They are all described as networks with the knots being the actors (for instance, an individual, a profession, a department or a project, ...) and the relationships being described as named arrows between the knots. The type of relationships could, for instance, be that of communication, state of competence, or economy. The relationships are described by a number of characteristics such as frequency, type of relationship, level or strength of the interaction, and so on. Finally, the data collected are analyzed by means of several techniques that illustrate the relationships.

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URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780123704641500071

Social network analysis

SNA is the practice of representing networks of people as graphs and then exploring these graphs. A typical social network representation has nodes for people, and edges connecting two nodes to represent one or more relationships between them (Figure 14.2). The resulting graph can reveal patterns of connection among people. Small networks can be represented visually, and these visualizations are intuitive and may make apparent patterns of connections, and reveal nodes that are highly connected or which play a critical role in connecting groups together. As the network representation of a community grows, it becomes necessary to apply graph analytic techniques to compute the characteristics of nodes and the graph as a whole.

Graph analytic techniques for SNA are broadly concerned with connections, distributions, and clustering. Let's first look at the analysis of connections in a social network. Some terms in SNA are specific to social (human) relationship networks. Nonetheless many SNA techniques are identical to those applied to other types of networks. Here are four connection related terms from SNA: homophily, multiplexity, reciprocity, and propinquity. If you've ever heard the old adage "birds of a feather flock together," well, that's homophily. It refers to the tendency for people to form ties to other people with whom they share some characteristic, which can be as simple as race, gender, or age, or less obvious traits such as educational status, hobbies, or religious beliefs. The concept of agency is also explored through homophily, because agency is the ability of a person to act outside the predicted norm, thus forming ties that bridge groups that might otherwise only exhibit homophily. Multiplexity refers to the potential for multiple different relationships to exist between two people. More generally a graph that captures this characteristic is referred to as a multi-partite graph. Reciprocity implies a directionality to a relationship. A reciprocal relationship can be represented by one or two edges, where one edge points at both nodes, or two edges represent the bidirectional nature of the relationship. Thus a social network that reflects reciprocity between nodes is by definition a directed graph. Finally, propinquity is a term that refers to a type of homophily, that is, the tendency of people to form ties when they are geographically close to one another. Another class of pattern of connections that can recur in a network is called motifs. Motifs are small, recurring groups of connections that can be distinctly detected via visual scrutiny or statistical analysis. In a social network, triads tend to be the smallest motif of interest, and as the name implies, a triad is a grouping of three nodes in which all three individuals are connected with one another.

Distribution is another way to analyze a social network. Distribution analysis employs many of the core graph analytic techniques used to analyze all types of graphs, including centrality measures, graph density, strength of connections, path analysis, and identification of hubs. We have explored various centrality measures related to nodes before, but let's recap a few of them in this context. Degree centrality is a measure of the number of connections an individual node has. Someone might be said to be more popular or important if they have high degree centrality. Betweenness centrality reveals the people that bridge disparate groups of nodes. They are the hubs that enable communication between people who are not directly connected.

Eigenvector centrality is a technique for measuring the influence of nodes in a network. It relies on the overlaying of weights onto all nodes in the network, where the weight value is associated with some characteristics of interest, such as expertise in a given field. Influence is apparent when analyzing nodes connected to nodes with high scores, because the cumulative score of a node connected to nodes with higher weights indicates a potentially greater influence. Graph density is a measure of the frequency of connections in the actual graph as compared to a graph in which the maximum possible number of connections could occur. Path analysis, like degree centrality, is concerned with many aspects of the edges between nodes. Recalling six degrees of separation, the value of six reflects the shortest average path between any two nodes-six hops through five nodes. Other path metrics consider things like closed paths (such as those found in a triad motif) versus open paths, disconnected groups of nodes, and directionality, which reveals something about the flow of information, commodities, or some other entity (such as an infectious agent, or popular trend) through a network.

Clustering is a third major area of concern with social networks. As the name implies, a cluster is a tightly connected group within itself, with fewer or perhaps no ties to other parts of the network. At its most extreme, a cluster can be a clique, like a scaled-up triad motif, where everyone is connected with everyone else within the cluster. A social circle is a less highly interconnected cluster. Cluster coefficient is essentially a density measure for clusters, where the actual number of connections within the cluster is compared with the maximal (clique) cluster. Finally, edges within clusters can obviously have an impact on the durability of a cluster. Analysis of the structural cohesion of a cluster is concerned with the nodes within the cluster that act as bridges. These are the nodes with high betweenness centrality within the cluster, which if removed, would cause the cluster to fall apart.

There are many practical applications for SNA. It can be used to analyze and suggest actions to improve the efficiency or communication within a business organization. SNA can be used to explore how an infectious disease might spread through a group of people. It can be used to model traffic patterns, the spread of ideas, how a product or service becomes popular within a given community. Advertisers are particularly keen to understand how something becomes popular and how individuals influence one another in the adoption of products, services, and ideas. Their goal is to turn viral marketing into something that can be understood and can be reproduced, for obvious reasons.

A contemporary, if slightly unsettling application of SNA happens within online social networking sites. Sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn track and analyze the connection patterns among their users. This has many internal applications such as the aforementioned concern regarding a product or service, since online advertising and marketing has become a very large business. SNA has found more recent application in detecting and analyzing terrorist networks. But as one might expect, this application of SNA can ensnare the innocent as well as the guilty. Social networking sites thrive when small-world networks emerge, and so they do whatever they can to encourage their formation such as suggesting you connect with friends or former coworkers. And as we learned earlier, there's an obvious benefit to encouraging users to assemble their own small-world networks within a social networking site: they are resilient and enduring, thus ensuring the relationship of the person to the site is also resilient and enduring!

In the next few chapters we'll revisit RDF graphs. We start by surveying some commonly used ontologies. So we'll end this part of the book with a brief discussion of how social networks can be represented in the Semantic Web. Social networks are of broad interest across many domains, because they can reveal relationships among people. As we saw at the beginning of this section, social networks are of particular interest in the context of libraries. Yet one of the earliest ontologies concerned with people and their relationships is predictably aimed at one of the most basic relationships one human can have to another: the "knows" relationship.

This relationship property resides in an ontology that makes explicit reference to the network effect of the "knows" relationship, the somewhat whimsically named Friend of a Friend ontology. This ontology is used to describe a variety of relationships among people in the real world as well as online. And since people tend to congregate in groups, there are ontologies for describing collections of people. One of these is the Organization ontology, which we will take a closer look at in the next chapter.

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3.1.3 Peer Influence in Social Networks

Finally, other research has utilized social network analysis to study peer effects in the context of the larger group and highlights that specific characteristics of the larger social group may mitigate or magnify peer effects. For example, findings from one study illustrate that highly central (i.e., high status in larger network, trend setters in school) social groups within the larger network endorsed prosocial as well as aggressive and deviant behaviors, whereas groups with lower centrality (i.e., groups with low acceptance in the larger network) showed magnified socialization of deviant behaviors only ( Ellis & Zarbatany, 2007). Moreover, adolescents tend to shift between different social groups, and there is evidence for socialization of prosocial behaviors from the attracting social group (i.e., the group to be joined), but not the departing social group (i.e., the group left behind) (Berger & Rodkin, 2012). These results suggest that although adolescent's membership in different peer groups can influence their engagement in positive and negative behaviors, there is often flexibility in the peer groups adolescents choose to identify with. Thus, to fully grasp peer effects, it is important to study multiple levels of the peer context, taking into account the dynamics between dyads, groups, and the larger social network.

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3.1 Principal Methods of Network Analysis

Simulation and experiment represent important methods within social network analysis. However, more and more social network analysts have begun to complement these traditional methods with survey research and sometimes ethnographic analysis. Important concepts that have been explored include network and actor centrality (i.e., measures of the connectedness of actors within a network); measures concerning structural properties of networks such as the density of a network (indicating the number of established ties in relation to the possible ties among the actors in a network); and the concept of clique (denoting a subset of actors within a network all, or most, of whom are directly tied to one another); or similarity measures: for instance, structural equivalence (two actors occupy structurally equivalent positions if they entertain identical linkages with the same third parties in the network) (see Wasserman and Faust 1994).

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3 Interorganizational Analyses

An alternative generalizing strategy has been to develop interorganizational analyses of networks. Drawing on social network analysis and work on interorganizational relations, they view policy making as an example of decision making by interdependent actors who engage in exchange relations (Knoke et al. 1996). Policy is seen as the product of complex interactions among actors drawn from both 'public' and 'private' sectors. Such actors are partly interdependent but also partly autonomous. They are linked horizontally without being part of a single organizational hierarchy; their relations are based on exchange, thereby producing policy networks, but nevertheless combine elements of conflict with those of cooperation (Marin and Mayntz 1991). Analysis focuses on the interaction of actors-the unit of analysis consists of the relations among network participants.

Interorganizational network analyses 'map' network structures, using qualitative and quantitative methods to reveal linkages between actors. Frequently, mathematical techniques derived from formal network analysis are used to establish the network position of actors and relationships amongst them, applying indicators/measures such as intensity of communication, reputation among network participants, or resources. Mapping networks to provide a systematic picture of linkages serves several purposes. It draws attention to the interrelations and interdependence between public and private actors. Quantification enables complex patterns to be revealed that would be difficult to find because the events studied are too numerous, vast, and/or scattered and allows comparison of networks across sectors, countries, and time periods. The most important ambition of interorganizational approaches is to offer a 'structural analysis' by looking at patterns of network relations. It is insufficient merely to analyze the attributes of individual actors, as the influence of such attributes on behavior depends on the network of relations of each actor (Emirbayer and Goodwin 1994). Instead, relations amongst actors must be studied as a whole. A structural analysis of private and public actor configurations in policy formation identifies the position of actors and the ways in which networks influence actors' capacity to use their resources. It therefore permits explicit consideration of the ways in which different structures create different mechanisms or logics in policy making.

The scope of interorganizational approaches is very broad. Thus, for example, policy network refers to 'structures' located 'beyond or between policy markets and policy hierarchies' that are composed of 'relatively autonomous action units' (Marin and Mayntz 1991). From an 'organizational state' perspective, Knoke et al. (1996) have conceived policy networks as relations linking organized interests with public officials, transforming heterogeneous communities of policy actors into webs of common benefit-seeking actors. To operationalize and apply in empirical studies, important choices must be made to narrow the scope of interorganizational networks. Similarly, applying quantitative techniques requires the choices over matters such as questions posed, categories created, the relationships to be analyzed, and variables to be controlled for. Social network analysis may embody a particular 'theoretical orientation' towards the structure of the social world, notably the need to study behavior as a set of relationships, but it provides a particular set of concepts and methods and a framework for testing arguments/models rather than a substantive set of hypotheses or a specific body of substantive theory.

In response to criticisms of important omissions in the policy network literature, current research has seen diversification (Thatcher 1998). This has taken two forms. First, additional explanatory factors are incorporated into network frameworks, often with attempts to analyze changes in networks. Thus, for instance, modifications of the institutional framework within which network actors operate, the technological and economic features of a policy problem, and the ideas, values, and knowledge of network actors have been examined. Second, in search of greater explanatory power, network concepts have been linked to other models of policy making ( Journal of Theoretical Politics 1998). Thus, for instance, using rational choice theories, networks have been analyzed as institutions, notably in their capacity to establish rules and long-lasting patterns of social relations for the interactions of actors in the policy process. They are argued to reduce uncertainty and transactions costs by aiding the creation of relations of trust that allow exchange. Ideas-based models, notably the 'advocacy coalition framework', have provided a different partner for network analyses. The effects of networks on coordination of actors under conditions of different forms of beliefs have been considered. Hence networks offer an intervening variable for the effects of ideas.

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5.2 Analyzing social media

Analysis of social media in general has mainly consisted of three types: (1) text analysis or text mining, (2) social network analysis, and (3) trend analysis ( Stieglitz et al., 2014), all of which are also used in webometric research. Text analysis, and sentiment analysis as part of it, aims at mining opinions and attitudes from online texts either through classification of texts or through automated analysis of the texts. Applications may include investigations about online communications and public opinions about policies, trending political topics, such as environmental concerns, or as means for targeted marketing. Thelwall, Buckley, and Paltoglou (2011, 2012) developed methods to analyze sentiment in tweets, and in fact, based on their research during the London Olympics in 2012, the London Eye was lit with a first ever social media-driven lightshow where the colors represented the Twitter mood, i.e., positive and negative tweets about the Olympics. The same methodology has later been used to, for instance, analyze the sentiment in tweets by astrophysicists (Holmberg, Bowman, Haustein, & Peters, 2014).

In social network analysis the goal of investigations is usually to investigate either a specific node's position in the network or to analyze the overall structure of the network. By using methods from social network analysis it is, for instance, possible to find influential people based on the number of connections they have to other people in the network. Analysis of the overall structure of networks can reveal some information about the communication patterns or patterns of information flow in the network or clusters of densely connected nodes. Methods from social network analysis have been used to investigate many different research goals; from market communication (Jansen, Zhang, Sobel, & Chowdury, 2009; Hennig-Thurau et al., 2010) and climate change communication (Pearce, Holmberg, Hellsten, & Nerlich, 2014; Kirilenko & Stepchenkova, 2014), to political conversations (Golbeck, Grimes, & Rogers, 2010; Kim & Park, 2012; Stieglitz & Dang-Xuan, 2013) and dissemination of health information (Brownstein, Freifeld, & Madoff, 2010; Scanfeld, Scanfeld, & Larson, 2010), online rumors (Castillo, Mendoza, & Poblete, 2011) and news (Lerman & Ghosh, 2010; Bruns & Burgess, 2012). Data from social media has even been used to track influenza epidemics (Ginsberg et al., 2009). As both the prosumers of social media and the data in social media are inherently networked, social network analysis is particularly well suited for analyzing social media content and use.

Trend analysis is perhaps the most complex of the three types of analysis, and it has only been due to recent developments in computing power and statistics that have made it possible to detect trends in real time and even make predictions about emerging trends based on social media data. By investigating trends in social media data researchers have attempted to make predictions of, for instance, influenza epidemics (Signorini, Segre, & Polgreen, 2011), box-office revenues (Asur & Huberman, 2010), winners of song competitions (Ciulla et al., 2012), and stock markets (Bollen, Mao, & Zeng, 2011), and they have been successful at it. Signorini et al. (2011) showed that tweets mentioning influenza accurately reflected reported disease levels, hence potentially functioning as an early signal. Asur and Huberman (2010) showed how tweets could be used as an indicator of real-world performance, as tweet frequencies and the sentiment of the tweets outperformed market-based predictors for box-office revenues. Ciulla et al. (2012) showed how Twitter activity correlated with the ranking of contestants in a song competition and how tweet volumes could be used to predict the outcome of the competition. Bollen et al. (2011) demonstrated how they could, with a relatively high accuracy, predict the closing values of the Dow Jones Industrial Average by analyzing moods from tweets.

The above examples of the predictive power of Twitter are made possible because those effected by the outcome or those that in a way "vote" (for instance, by going to movies, buying stocks, etc.) are also those that tweet. As an example of the opposite, take the papal conclave that in the spring of 2013 convened to elect the new pope. In the couple of weeks before the papal conclave I collected almost 700,000 tweets that used words such as "new pope" or "next pope" to analyze the Twitter chatter surrounding the papal conclave. Of these tweets only nine also mentioned Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who the papal conclave elected and who then became Pope Francis. Thousands of tweets that mentioned other cardinals reflected the public interest and who the news media around the world had lifted as "favorites" in the election. Those that tweeted did not have a vote in the election and hence the tweets reflected another aspect of the election. It is of outmost importance to understand who has created the social media mentions that are being investigated and what kind of connection they have to the phenomenon investigated as it has an immediate impact on both the validity and the reliability of the results. If those contributing to the social media data that is being analyzed do not participate in the "voting" then the analysis may indicate some other aspects of the phenomenon investigated, or in a worst case, be completely useless.

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10.1.2 Social Networks

When networks deal directly or indirectly with persons, such as authors, friends (directly), or their papers (indirectly) one uses the term social networks and their study is then referred to as social network analysis (in short: SNA), see Scott (1991), Wasserman and Faust (1994), and Otte and Rousseau (2002). In social network analysis, one makes a distinction between two types of analysis: the study of ego-networks, and global studies. Ego-networks study the network originating from one actor referred to as the ego. The ego network is the subgraph consisting of the ego and all nodes linked directly (neighbors) or indirectly (neighbors of neighbors) to the ego, and the corresponding links. Sometimes an ego network is restricted to the ego and its neighbors. An example in the information sciences is Howard White's description of Eugene Garfield's research network (White, 2000). When performing a global analysis, one tries to map all relations of all actors belonging to the network.

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3.2.4 Person-to-person contact

Another behavioral pathway by which networks influence disease is by restricting or promoting exposure to infectious disease agents. In this regard, the methodological links between epidemiology and networks are striking. What is perhaps most remarkable is that the same network characteristics that can be health-promoting can at the same time be health-damaging if they serve as vectors for the spread of infectious disease.

The contribution of social network analysis to the modeling of disease transmission is the understanding that in many, if not most, cases, disease transmission is not spread randomly throughout a population. Social network analysis is well suited to the development of models in which exposure between individuals is not random but rather is based on geographic location, sociodemographic characteristics (age, race, gender), or other important characteristics of the individual such as socioeconomic position, occupation, or sexual orientation (Laumann et al. 1989). Furthermore, because social network analysis focuses on characteristics of the network rather than on characteristics of the individual, it is suited ideally to the study of diffusion of transmissible diseases through populations via bridging ties between networks, or uncovering characteristics of ego-centered networks that promote the spread of disease.

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The sociology of collective behavior studies social conditions such as political structures or shared beliefs as they influence noninstitutionalized, unconventional group activity such as panics, crazes, mass delusions, riots, and reform or revolutionary movements. Several approaches to understanding collective behavior will be examined, including Smelser's theory of collective behavior, resource mobilization, the political process model, the political opportunity model, social network analysis, the new social psychology of social movements, and the historical-comparative analysis of revolutions. It will be shown that Smelser's theory focused on social conditions influencing the origin of collective behavior and social movements, whereas subsequent approaches-beginning with resource mobilization-began to shift the basic question being addressed to the conditions influencing success or failure of social movements. However, as Klandermans has indicated, many of the recent categories of analysis are actually similar to those pioneered by Smelser, even if utilized differently. Considering all of these developments, the sociology of collective behavior has become one of the most dynamic and innovative fields in sociology.

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Social network analysis in general studies the behavior of the individual at the micro level, the pattern of relationships (network structure) at the macro level, and the interactions between the two. Social networks are both the cause of and the result of individual behavior.

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Advantages and disadvantages of social networks

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Advantages and disadvantages of social networks

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The social networking sites are the major platform on the internet for communication and exchange of information since the early 21st century. The social media platforms get updated regularly with features depending upon the need of the users and usage pattern.

In the early stage of the social networking era, people from all around the world started using to connect with friends and families to share and communicate through photos or text messages. Since the development and rapid growth on the internet speed, the usages increased more towards generating and sharing media such as photos, GIFs and videos.

There are many different social networking sites for a different purpose, for example, Linkedin is a social network for professionals, while Snapchat is a social network mostly for teenagers.

Social Networking - Advantages and Disadvantages

Modern social networking sites are not just about connecting and sharing information, such platforms are being used for many different purposes. Most people are still using social networking sites for social purpose while many are using for a business purpose. Government, security agencies, researchers, etc are using for some different purposes.

Advantages of Social Networking Sites

Social networking sites are the tools for anyone to make the best use out of it. Millions of people around the world are using social media platforms for, fundraising, social awareness, promoting local business, and so many good things. There are so many benefits or advantages of social networking sites if used properly.

1. Networking without border

One of the primary goals of any social networking site, networking is a primary feature any social media platform has to offers to consider the platform as a social networking site. One of the most important and noteworthy advantages of social networking sites is that it enables everyone to connect no matter which country they belong to.

2. Instant News and Information

Before the social media era, we used to communicate on email and instant messengers like Yahoo, AOL, and MSN. All those IMs and communication tools were mostly one to one communication. But in Social networking sites, communication can be one-to-many instantly. We do not have to look for the news visiting different news websites, the news will find us on the modern social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter.

3. Great marketing channel for Business

Social networking sites are one of the best marketing channel available in this world. Social Media Marketing is the term described for the marketing technique used on social networking sites or platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, etc. There are currently over 4 billion social media users globally ready to discover your information about your business or service. (Also read - Pros and Cons of Social Media for Business)

4. Awareness and Activism

We have already witnessed the great modern revolutions and events around the world. Social networking sites played a very important role in such revolutions and events like Occupy Wallstreet, Arab Spring, The Libyan Revolution, Hongkong protests, etc.

Almost all internet users do use at least one social media platform. It is easy to spread the message and invite many people to take part in events for awareness and activism.

5. Exchange of ideas and Collaboration

Social networking sites like Facebook do have collaboration features like Group and Document sharing. One can create a group and start to share ideas and information for a specific purpose. Social networking sites are very useful to collect feedback and comments on the various idea.

Disadvantages of Social Networking Sites

Like any other tool available for humans, Social Networking Sites also have many disadvantages if you do not use consciously.

1. Addiction

The compulsive behavior developed due to social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc leads to negative effects. Social networking addict constantly checks Social Media Feed or checks out people's profiles for hours and hours. The compulsion to use social media can make one social media addict. Researchers at Chicago University concluded that social media addiction can be stronger than addiction to cigarettes and alcohol.

2. Mental Illness

Social networking sites are linked to increased risk of mental health problems like depression, anxiety, and loneliness. Too much time spent scrolling through social media can result in symptoms of anxiety and/or depression. Teenager's mental health is often negatively affected by this culture of comparison as well.

3. Frauds & Scams

This is yet another challenge for social networking companies to solve. There are billions of fake accounts on various social networking sites including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Facebook removes more than 3 billion fake accounts in six months and Five percent of Facebook's monthly active users are fake, the company said.

4. Misleading Information

This is probably the most challenging problem for social networking companies. Fake news and misleading information can go viral in no time on social media platforms. On Facebook, more than 80% of people who react on the link do not read the complete article or content. Due to which many publishers and spammers are misusing the platforms by sharing fake and misleading information.

5. Cyberbullying

Since anyone can use and express on social networking sites, many use it express hatred and aggression. The public figures are the commonly targeted victims of cyberbullying. Teenagers, in particular, are at risk of cyberbullying through the use of social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram, etc.

Cyberbullying is also associated with depression, anxiety and an elevated risk of suicidal thoughts.

Most of the users of social networking sites are not fully aware of the security measures they need to take care of while using social media platforms. People share thoughts, personal experience, photos, etc on social media sites. Such information can be helpful for hackers to hack your accounts in social media, emails or even your phone.

Several personal twitter and Facebook accounts have been hacked in the past that have affected the individuals' personal lives.

7. Privacy Issues

Your behavior on social media can help people or companies know who you are. It is not hard to find how many friends you meet daily, interact, or what type of food you like. Based on your check-ins on social media, one can easily find where you hang out. Based on your check-ins, browsing history, interaction on various Facebook pages, groups, friends or even links, bots can suggest the products or services.

What do you think about Social Media Platforms? Did we miss any pros and cons of social networking sites? - Please let us know!

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12 Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Networking Sites

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The social networking sites are the major platform on the internet for communication and exchange of information since the early 21st century. The social media platforms get updated regularly with features depending upon the need of the users and usage pattern.

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Most Popular Social Networks 2003 - 2019

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Most Popular Social Networks 2003 - 2019

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shows a vision and principles around the construction of a social media and messaging platform focused on privacy, highlighting the bases of the networks explaining their sources and their strength towards society.

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My focus for the last couple of years has been understanding and addressing the biggest challenges facing Facebook. This means taking positions on important issues concerning the future of the internet. In this note, I'll outline our vision and principles around building a privacy-focused messaging and social networking platform. There's a lot to do here, and we're committed to working openly and consulting with experts across society as we develop this.

Over the last 15 years, Facebook and Instagram have helped people connect with friends, communities, and interests in the digital equivalent of a town square. But people increasingly also want to connect privately in the digital equivalent of the living room. As I think about the future of the internet, I believe a privacy-focused communications platform will become even more important than today's open platforms. Privacy gives people the freedom to be themselves and connect more naturally, which is why we build social networks.

Today we already see that private messaging, ephemeral stories, and small groups are by far the fastest growing areas of online communication. There are a number of reasons for this. Many people prefer the intimacy of communicating one-on-one or with just a few friends. People are more cautious of having a permanent record of what they've shared. And we all expect to be able to do things like payments privately and securely.

Public social networks will continue to be very important in people's lives -- for connecting with everyone you know, discovering new people, ideas and content, and giving people a voice more broadly. People find these valuable every day, and there are still a lot of useful services to build on top of them. But now, with all the ways people also want to interact privately, there's also an opportunity to build a simpler platform that's focused on privacy first.

I understand that many people don't think Facebook can or would even want to build this kind of privacy-focused platform -- because frankly we don't currently have a strong reputation for building privacy protective services, and we've historically focused on tools for more open sharing. But we've repeatedly shown that we can evolve to build the services that people really want, including in private messaging and stories.

I believe the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won't stick around forever. This is the future I hope we will help bring about.

We plan to build this the way we've developed WhatsApp: focus on the most fundamental and private use case -- messaging -- make it as secure as possible, and then build more ways for people to interact on top of that, including calls, video chats, groups, stories, businesses, payments, commerce, and ultimately a platform for many other kinds of private services.

This privacy-focused platform will be built around several principles:

Private interactions. People should have simple, intimate places where they have clear control over who can communicate with them and confidence that no one else can access what they share.

Encryption. People's private communications should be secure. End-to-end encryption prevents anyone -- including us -- from seeing what people share on our services.

Reducing Permanence. People should be comfortable being themselves, and should not have to worry about what they share coming back to hurt them later. So we won't keep messages or stories around for longer than necessary to deliver the service or longer than people want them.

Safety. People should expect that we will do everything we can to keep them safe on our services within the limits of what's possible in an encrypted service.

Interoperability. People should be able to use any of our apps to reach their friends, and they should be able to communicate across networks easily and securely.

Secure data storage. People should expect that we won't store sensitive data in countries with weak records on human rights like privacy and freedom of expression in order to protect data from being improperly accessed.

Over the next few years, we plan to rebuild more of our services around these ideas. The decisions we'll face along the way will mean taking positions on important issues concerning the future of the internet. We understand there are a lot of tradeoffs to get right, and we're committed to consulting with experts and discussing the best way forward. This will take some time, but we're not going to develop this major change in our direction behind closed doors. We're going to do this as openly and collaboratively as we can because many of these issues affect different parts of society.

Private Interactions as a Foundation

For a service to feel private, there must never be any doubt about who you are communicating with. We've worked hard to build privacy into all our products, including those for public sharing. But one great property of messaging services is that even as your contacts list grows, your individual threads and groups remain private. As your friends evolve over time, messaging services evolve gracefully and remain intimate.

This is different from broader social networks, where people can accumulate friends or followers until the services feel more public. This is well-suited to many important uses -- telling all your friends about something, using your voice on important topics, finding communities of people with similar interests, following creators and media, buying and selling things, organizing fundraisers, growing businesses, or many other things that benefit from having everyone you know in one place. Still, when you see all these experiences together, it feels more like a town square than a more intimate space like a living room.

There is an opportunity to build a platform that focuses on all of the ways people want to interact privately. This sense of privacy and intimacy is not just about technical features -- it is designed deeply into the feel of the service overall. In WhatsApp, for example, our team is obsessed with creating an intimate environment in every aspect of the product. Even where we've built features that allow for broader sharing, it's still a less public experience. When the team built groups, they put in a size limit to make sure every interaction felt private. When we shipped stories on WhatsApp, we limited public content because we worried it might erode the feeling of privacy to see lots of public content -- even if it didn't actually change who you're sharing with.

In a few years, I expect future versions of Messenger and WhatsApp to become the main ways people communicate on the Facebook network. We're focused on making both of these apps faster, simpler, more private and more secure, including with end-to-end encryption. We then plan to add more ways to interact privately with your friends, groups, and businesses. If this evolution is successful, interacting with your friends and family across the Facebook network will become a fundamentally more private experience.

People expect their private communications to be secure and to only be seen by the people they've sent them to -- not hackers, criminals, over-reaching governments, or even the people operating the services they're using.

There is a growing awareness that the more entities that have access to your data, the more vulnerabilities there are for someone to misuse it or for a cyber attack to expose it. There is also a growing concern among some that technology may be centralizing power in the hands of governments and companies like ours. And some people worry that our services could access their messages and use them for advertising or in other ways they don't expect.

End-to-end encryption is an important tool in developing a privacy-focused social network. Encryption is decentralizing -- it limits services like ours from seeing the content flowing through them and makes it much harder for anyone else to access your information. This is why encryption is an increasingly important part of our online lives, from banking to healthcare services. It's also why we built end-to-end encryption into WhatsApp after we acquired it.

In the last year, I've spoken with dissidents who've told me encryption is the reason they are free, or even alive. Governments often make unlawful demands for data, and while we push back and fight these requests in court, there's always a risk we'll lose a case -- and if the information isn't encrypted we'd either have to turn over the data or risk our employees being arrested if we failed to comply. This may seem extreme, but we've had a case where one of our employees was actually jailed for not providing access to someone's private information even though we couldn't access it since it was encrypted.

At the same time, there are real safety concerns to address before we can implement end-to-end encryption across all of our messaging services. Encryption is a powerful tool for privacy, but that includes the privacy of people doing bad things. When billions of people use a service to connect, some of them are going to misuse it for truly terrible things like child exploitation, terrorism, and extortion. We have a responsibility to work with law enforcement and to help prevent these wherever we can. We are working to improve our ability to identify and stop bad actors across our apps by detecting patterns of activity or through other means, even when we can't see the content of the messages, and we will continue to invest in this work. But we face an inherent tradeoff because we will never find all of the potential harm we do today when our security systems can see the messages themselves.

Finding the right ways to protect both privacy and safety is something societies have historically grappled with. There are still many open questions here and we'll consult with safety experts, law enforcement and governments on the best ways to implement safety measures. We'll also need to work together with other platforms to make sure that as an industry we get this right. The more we can create a common approach, the better.

On balance, I believe working towards implementing end-to-end encryption for all private communications is the right thing to do. Messages and calls are some of the most sensitive private conversations people have, and in a world of increasing cyber security threats and heavy-handed government intervention in many countries, people want us to take the extra step to secure their most private data. That seems right to me, as long as we take the time to build the appropriate safety systems that stop bad actors as much as we possibly can within the limits of an encrypted service. We've started working on these safety systems building on the work we've done in WhatsApp, and we'll discuss them with experts through 2019 and beyond before fully implementing end-to-end encryption. As we learn more from those experts, we'll finalize how to roll out these systems.

We increasingly believe it's important to keep information around for shorter periods of time. People want to know that what they share won't come back to hurt them later, and reducing the length of time their information is stored and accessible will help.

One challenge in building social tools is the "permanence problem". As we build up large collections of messages and photos over time, they can become a liability as well as an asset. For example, many people who have been on Facebook for a long time have photos from when they were younger that could be embarrassing. But people also really love keeping a record of their lives. And if all posts on Facebook and Instagram disappeared, people would lose access to a lot of valuable knowledge and experiences others have shared.

I believe there's an opportunity to set a new standard for private communication platforms -- where content automatically expires or is archived over time. Stories already expire after 24 hours unless you archive them, and that gives people the comfort to share more naturally. This philosophy could be extended to all private content.

For example, messages could be deleted after a month or a year by default. This would reduce the risk of your messages resurfacing and embarrassing you later. Of course you'd have the ability to change the timeframe or turn off auto-deletion for your threads if you wanted. And we could also provide an option for you to set individual messages to expire after a few seconds or minutes if you wanted.

It also makes sense to limit the amount of time we store messaging metadata. We use this data to run our spam and safety systems, but we don't always need to keep it around for a long time. An important part of the solution is to collect less personal data in the first place, which is the way WhatsApp was built from the outset.

People want to be able to choose which service they use to communicate with people. However, today if you want to message people on Facebook you have to use Messenger, on Instagram you have to use Direct, and on WhatsApp you have to use WhatsApp. We want to give people a choice so they can reach their friends across these networks from whichever app they prefer.

We plan to start by making it possible for you to send messages to your contacts using any of our services, and then to extend that interoperability to SMS too. Of course, this would be opt-in and you will be able to keep your accounts separate if you'd like.

There are privacy and security advantages to interoperability. For example, many people use Messenger on Android to send and receive SMS texts. Those texts can't be end-to-end encrypted because the SMS protocol is not encrypted. With the ability to message across our services, however, you'd be able to send an encrypted message to someone's phone number in WhatsApp from Messenger.

This could also improve convenience in many experiences where people use Facebook or Instagram as their social network and WhatsApp as their preferred messaging service. For example, lots of people selling items on Marketplace list their phone number so people can message them about buying it. That's not ideal, because you're giving strangers your phone number. With interoperability, you'd be able to use WhatsApp to receive messages sent to your Facebook account without sharing your phone number -- and the buyer wouldn't have to worry about whether you prefer to be messaged on one network or the other.

You can imagine many simple experiences like this -- a person discovers a business on Instagram and easily transitions to their preferred messaging app for secure payments and customer support; another person wants to catch up with a friend and can send them a message that goes to their preferred app without having to think about where that person prefers to be reached; or you simply post a story from your day across both Facebook and Instagram and can get all the replies from your friends in one place.

You can already send and receive SMS texts through Messenger on Android today, and we'd like to extend this further in the future, perhaps including the new telecom RCS standard. However, there are several issues we'll need to work through before this will be possible. First, Apple doesn't allow apps to interoperate with SMS on their devices, so we'd only be able to do this on Android. Second, we'd need to make sure interoperability doesn't compromise the expectation of encryption that people already have using WhatsApp. Finally, it would create safety and spam vulnerabilities in an encrypted system to let people send messages from unknown apps where our safety and security systems couldn't see the patterns of activity.

These are significant challenges and there are many questions here that require further consultation and discussion. But if we can implement this, we can give people more choice to use their preferred service to securely reach the people they want.

People want to know their data is stored securely in places they trust. Looking at the future of the internet and privacy, I believe one of the most important decisions we'll make is where we'll build data centers and store people's sensitive data.

There's an important difference between providing a service in a country and storing people's data there. As we build our infrastructure around the world, we've chosen not to build data centers in countries that have a track record of violating human rights like privacy or freedom of expression. If we build data centers and store sensitive data in these countries, rather than just caching non-sensitive data, it could make it easier for those governments to take people's information.

Upholding this principle may mean that our services will get blocked in some countries, or that we won't be able to enter others anytime soon. That's a tradeoff we're willing to make. We do not believe storing people's data in some countries is a secure enough foundation to build such important internet infrastructure on.

Of course, the best way to protect the most sensitive data is not to store it at all, which is why WhatsApp doesn't store any encryption keys and we plan to do the same with our other services going forward.

But storing data in more countries also establishes a precedent that emboldens other governments to seek greater access to their citizen's data and therefore weakens privacy and security protections for people around the world. I think it's important for the future of the internet and privacy that our industry continues to hold firm against storing people's data in places where it won't be secure.

Over the next year and beyond, there are a lot more details and tradeoffs to work through related to each of these principles. A lot of this work is in the early stages, and we are committed to consulting with experts, advocates, industry partners, and governments -- including law enforcement and regulators -- around the world to get these decisions right.

At the same time, working through these principles is only the first step in building out a privacy-focused social platform. Beyond that, significant thought needs to go into all of the services we build on top of that foundation -- from how people do payments and financial transactions, to the role of businesses and advertising, to how we can offer a platform for other private services.

But these initial questions are critical to get right. If we do this well, we can create platforms for private sharing that could be even more important to people than the platforms we've already built to help people share and connect more openly.

Doing this means taking positions on some of the most important issues facing the future of the internet. As a society, we have an opportunity to set out where we stand, to decide how we value private communications, and who gets to decide how long and where data should be stored.

I believe we should be working towards a world where people can speak privately and live freely knowing that their information will only be seen by who they want to see it and won't all stick around forever. If we can help move the world in this direction, I will be proud of the difference we've made.

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My focus for the last couple of years has been understanding and addressing the biggest challenges facing Facebook. This means taking positions on important issues concerning the future of the internet. In this note, I'll outline our vision and principles around building a privacy-focused messaging and social networking platform.

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How Learning Is Improved By Using Social Media In Education

Today, both social media and technology have become an indispensable part of our lives. Every individual who is above 13 years old will have their account on any of the popular social media networks such as Facebook, SnapChat, Instagram, etc. WhatsApp has raised the minimum age to 16 years old.

Students are using various online tools to cater to different requirements. It will not be wrong to say that social media and education goes hand in hand in the modern world.

However, the question that arises is: how is social online networking useful to students? Are there ways that social media in education can benefit learners and help to fill in the gaps in learning if used in a safe and appropriate way?

Here are some of the educational approaches and benefits of social media to improve the academic performance of students:

1. Communication And Collaboration

The biggest advantage of social media is better communication. A student can connect with anyone at any point in time via Kids Messenger or WhatsApp. They can use such platforms via their smartphone, tablet or computer, and learners can exchange questions, make phone calls or video calls. If a student is stuck with their homework, they can always communicate with their friends or tutors. They don't need to wait and meet the teacher physically. Social media promote learning by offering support with sharing documents as well such as via Google Drive Box, Google Docs. Some teachers even connect with their class via Facebook live, as this American teacher does by reading bedtime stories to her students every evening.

2. Finding Concrete Information Online

Various websites and social media networks are providing plenty of information that can be helpful to students. Via social media news feeds, students can find informational and relevant websites they want to follow so as to be kept in the loop. Depending on their interests, students can find answers to their questions. Sites, such as Tumblr and Pinterest, can offer children inspirations for school projects or practical problem-solving.

The educational benefits of social networking sites are also those that help students prepare for important lessons and learn certain concepts with great efficacy. Social media websites will contain the latest data on various school subjects and thus, the students have the opportunity to survey and look into what is new. Social media is a Wikipedia for students these days. We are witnessing an era of social media learning.

3. Parental Involvement

Social media help the parents stay involved in the child's learning. Via the school's Twitter or Facebook feed parents can be updated on school-related activities, projects, and events that are happening. The school teachers can get in touch with the parents in case they want to share the child's progress via Skype or other secure online platforms the institution uses. A social network for parents can be created too via WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, which can enable them to be informed about school matters, learning, and education.

These are all positive impacts social media have on parents' communication with the school so as to learn about, share and observe their children's' academic and personal progress at school. This again is a positive impact social media have on students' performance as their parents can offer better informed academic support at home.

4. Improved Literacy, Communication, And Reading Skills

It is usually observed that students are bored of reading and writing, however, the internet and social media provide plenty of online information which often students are more inclined to read, especially if these pieces of information include eye-catching animations. Online messages, comments, news, articles, and books provide an endless list of information to be read, and students are motivated to devote their time and put some extra efforts towards their learning.

Such online activities contribute to the child's general learning, and kids eventually develop stronger reading habits resulting in a drastic improvement in their writing abilities. Social media sites are in the most part interactive and this definitely keeps the student involved.

5. Distance Learning Opportunities

Another great advantage of social media in education is distance learning opportunities. There are many disadvantaged students who are not able to acquire formal education by attending regular classes in an educational institution. With the help of various online tools along with social media, modern educators are able to attract students through distance learning programs. Soon, this will be an inseparable part of our modern education system. Today, hosting live lectures via Skype or webinars via WebinarJam is the way forward to allowing students who live in remote areas of the world to access education.

Therefore, it can be claimed that social media platforms, enabling free voice and video calls, the sharing of documents, links and any other type of information can be highly effective in improving the academic performance and students learning.

At the same time, the parents and teachers must note that high security must be maintained if a minor is making use of any social media websites. There are great tips for keeping kids safe online which are for sure useful to all parents nowadays.

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Social Media In Education: Can They Improve The Learning?

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Today, both social media and technology have become an indispensable part of our lives. Every individual who is above 13 years old will have their account on any of the popular social media networks such as Facebook, SnapChat, Instagram, etc. WhatsApp has raised the minimum age to 16 years old.