is203 - Social and Organizational Issues of Information

Week 5 Readings: Social Networks, Social Structure, and Info Technology

February 18th, 2008 coye

Now that we have spent the first four weeks examining various overviews of research regarding the social issues of information, we are going to begin spending some quality time with specific research areas.  This week is all about the role of social networks and network structures, with a focus on how they apply to information and information technologies.  For Tuesday’s class we are reading one piece for a background in method and terminology (Wasserman and Faust).  The second article is a classic theoretical piece (Granovetter’s ‘Strenght of Weak Ties’) that has been used to legitimize just about every social networking site on the Internet.  We are going to get to the specifics of Granovetter’s argument and find out what the big deal is about these so-called ‘weak ties’. 

On Thursday we will read an article that describes another commonly used (and often misused) social networking concept: homophily.  McPherson, Smith-Lovin and Cook’s (2001) article is theoretically rigourous with excellent examples and supporting material.  We will talk about the major arguments in the article and then talk about how and why the principle of homophily is so important to those of us who care about issues like the adoption and use of information systems and technologies.

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