COMM 555 – Social Networks

Annenberg School for Communication

University of Pennsylvania

Spring, 2006

M 1-3 in ANNS 319

Prof. Keith Hampton

Office Hours: Tuesdays 10-12

Description

Social networks is the description of a diverse body of research and theory based upon the premise that relationships, in contrast to individual attributes, are useful for understanding social structure and social behavior. Network analysts study the structure of these relations, how the patterns of social interactions allocate resources, constrain behavior, and channel information and social change. Their methods are both quantitative and qualitative.

This course is an introduction to social network analysis. We will consider how using a network perspective can help to conceptualize and clarify many different types of important sociological questions and offer new ways of answering those questions. The course will show how attending to the organization of social relationships can increase our understanding of various aspects of individual, community, and organizational life. The topic of “social capital” – resources people may access through their social contacts – will be a central focus of the course. What are the costs and benefits of different kinds of network structure for people and for groups? We will constantly ask how and why various forms of personal social capital are unequally distributed, and how this contributes to social mobility and the reproduction of inequality.

Procedures and Evaluation

Seminar sessions will involve intensive discussions of assigned readings. Final grades will be based on a major paper (60%), weekly commentaries on course readings (30%) and an assessment of student’s contributions to class-based discussions (10%).

Participation: To encourage active participation all seminar members will take turns introducing the day's readings and facilitating the discussion at different times during the semester. At the beginning of each week’s session discussion leaders will briefly evaluate the readings and suggest possible questions for discussion.

Short papers: Students are responsible for submitting short commentaries (3-4 double spaced pages in length) on twelve of the fifteen weeks’ readings (excludes week 1 and those weeks when the class does not meet). The papers should address all the readings for the week. Papers should consist of limited summary focusing on an evaluation of the readings and identifying questions for discussion (the paper’s strengths and limitations, the key issues, etc.).

Major paper/project (due final day of class!): The major paper can take on one of a number of different forms to be negotiated individually with the instructor. Projects should deal with course themes focusing on a topic of interest to the student. Possibilities for the final paper/project include a full research proposal, or a paper of publishable quality based on the analysis of existing data or data collected as part of an original research project

It is recommended that students subscribe to Socnet, the e-mail list of the International Network for Social Network Analysis (INSNA). On occasion current topics from this list will be discussed in class.

To subscribe to Socnet send email to listserv@lists.ufl.edu with the following information in the body of the message (leave the Subject line blank):

subscribe SOCNET <yourfirstname> <yourlastname>

Course Outline

January 9 (Week 1) - Introduction and Organization

January 16 (Week 2) – Beginnings (No Class - Holiday).

Gladwell, M. 1999. Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg. The New Yorker 74(41): 52-64.

Wellman, Barry. 1999. The Network Community: an Introduction. Pp. 1-48 in Networks in the Global Village, edited by Barry Wellman. Boulder: Westview Press.

Munge, Peter and Noshir Contractor. 2003. Theories of Communication Networks. Oxford: Oxford University Press (pp 29-45).

Bott, Elizabeth. 1955. Urban Families: Conjugal Roles and Social Networks. Human Relations 8:345-83

January 23 (Week 3) - Weak Ties and Structural Holes.

Granovetter, Mark. 1973. The Strength of Weak Ties. American Journal of Sociology 78(6): 1360-1380.

Granovetter, Mark. 1982. The Strength of Weak Ties: A Network Theory Revisited. Pp. 105-130 in, Social Structure and Network Analysis, edited by Peter Marsden and Nan Lin. Beverly Hills: Sage.

Burt, Ronald. 1993. The Social Structure of Competition. Pp. 65-103 in Explorations in Economic Sociology, edited by Richard Swedberg. New York: Sage.

January 30 (Week 4) - Transitivity and Centrality.

Feld, Scott, and Richard Elmore. 1982. Patterns of Sociometric Choices: Transitivity Reconsidered. Social Psychology Quarterly 45(2): 77-85.

Freeman, Linton. 1979. Centrality in Social Networks: Conceptual Clarification. Social Networks 1: 215-39.

Borgatti, Stephen. 2005. Centrality and Network Flow. Social Networks 27(1): 55-71.

February 6 (Week 5) – Homophily and Reciprocity.

McPherson, Miller, Lynn Smith-Lovin and James Cook. 2001. Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks. Annual Review of Sociology 27: 415-444.

Feld, Scott. 1982. Social Structural Determinants of Similarity Among Associates. American Sociological Review 47(6): 797-801.

Erickson, Bonnie. 1997. The Relational Basis of Attitudes. Pp. 99-122 in Social Structures: A Network Approach edited by Barry Wellman and S. D. Berkowitz. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Suitor, Jill, Karl Pillemer, and Shirley Keeton. 1995. When Experience Counts: The Effects of Experiential and Structural Similarity on Patterns of Support and Interpersonal Stress. Social Forces 73(4): 1573-1588.

Gouldner, Alvin. 1960. The Norm of Reciprocity: A Preliminary Statement. American Sociological Review 25:161-78.

February 13 (Week 6) - Community, Strong Ties, and Social Support.

Wellman, Barry, and Scot Wortley. 1990. Different Strokes From Different Folks: Community Ties and Social Support. American Journal of Sociology 96(3):558-88.

Wellman, Barry, and Kenneth Frank. 2001. Network Capital in a Multi-Level World: Getting Support from Personal Communities. Pp. 233-274 in Social Capital: Theory and Research, edited by Nan Lin, Karen Cook, and Ronald Burt. New York: Aldine De Gruyter.

Espinoza, Vicente. 1999. Social Networks Among the Urban Poor: Inequalities and Integration in a Latin American City. Pp. 147-184 in Networks in the Global Village, edited by Barry Wellman. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

MacDonald, John and Leatrice MacDonald. 1974. Chain Migration, Ethnic Neighborhood Formation, and Social Networks. Pp 226-236 in An Urban World, edited by C. Tilly, Boston: Little, Brown.

February 20 (Week 7) - Social Capital.

Putnam, Robert. 2001. Social Capital Measurement and Consequences. Canadian Journal of Policy Research 2(1):41-51.

Lin, Nan. 2001. Building a Network Theory of Social Capital. Pp. 3-29 in Social Capital: Theory and Research, edited by Nan Lin, Karen Cook, and Ronald Burt. New York: Aldine De Gruyter.

Burt, Ronald. 2001. Structural Holes versus Network Closure as Social Capital. Pp. 31-56 in Social Capital: Theory and Research, edited by Nan Lin, Karen Cook, and Ronald Burt. New York: Aldine De Gruyter.

Erickson, Bonnie. 2001. Good Networks and Good Jobs: The Value of Social Capital to Employers and Employees. Pp. 127-158 in Social Capital: Theory and Research, edited by Nan Lin, Karen Cook, and Ronald Burt. New York: Aldine De Gruyter.

Fernandez, Roberto, Emilio Castilla and Paul Moore. 2000. Social Capital at Work: Networks and Employment at a Phone Center. American Journal of Sociology 105(5): 1288-356.

February 27 (Week 8) – Measurement I.

Wasserman, Stanley and Katherine Faust. 1994. Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications. New York: Cambridge University Press. [Ch.2]

Kadushin, Charles. 2005. Who Benefits from Network Analysis: Ethics of Social Network Research. Social Networks 27(2): 139-153.

Marsden, Peter V. 2005. Recent Developments in Network Measurement. Pp. 8-30 in Peter Carrington, John Scott, and Stanley Wasserman (eds) Models and Methods in Social Network Analysis. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Bernard, Russell H. and Peter Killworth. (1997). The Search for Social Physics. Connections 20(1): 16-34.

Killworth, Peter, Eugene Johnsen, H Russell Bernard, Gene Ann Shelley, and Christopher McCarthy. 1990. Estimating the Size of Personal Networks. Social Networks 12: 289-312.

Marin, Alexandra and Keith Hampton (forthcoming). Simplifying the Personal Network Name Generator. Fieldwork.

March 6 (Week 9) – Measurement II (No Class).

Marsden, Peter, and Karen Campbell. 1984. Measuring Tie Strength. Social Forces 63: 482-501.

Lin, Nan, Yang-chih Fu, & Ray-May Hsung. 2001. The Position Generator: Measurement Techniques for Investigations of Social Capital. Pp. 57-84 in Social Capital: Theory and Research, edited by Nan Lin, Karen Cook, and Ronald Burt. New York: Aldine De Gruyter.

van der Gaag, Martin and Tom .A.B. Snijders. 2005. The Resource Generator: Social Capital Quantification with Concrete Items. Social Networks 27(1): 1-29.

Huisman, Mark and Marijtje A.J. van Duijn. 2005. Software for Social Network Analysis. Pp. 270-316 in Peter Carrington, John Scott, and Stanley Wasserman (eds) Models and Methods in Social Network Analysis. New York: Cambridge University Press.

March 13 (Week 10) - Small World and Scale-Free Networks.

(examine the following Webpages: Erdös Number Project: http://www.oakland.edu/enp/ and Oracle of Bacon: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/oracle/)

Milgram, Stanley. 1967. The Small-World Problem. Psychology Today 1:62-67

Barabasi, Albert-Laszlo and Eric Bonabeau. 2003. Scale-Free Networks. Scientific American 288(5).

Watts, Duncan. 2004. The ‘New’ Science of Networks. Annual Review of Sociology 30: 243-270.

Bonacich, Phillip. 2004. The Invasion of the Physicists. Social Networks 26(3): 285-288.

Kilworth, Peter, Christopher McCarthy, Russell Bernard and Mark House. 2006. The Accuracy of Small World Chains in Social Networks. Social Networks 28(1): 85-96.

March 20 (Week 11) - Computer Networks as Social Networks I.

Kronholz , June (2003, February 13). After the Science Fair: Dear World, Please Stop Writing Me: A Girl's E-Mail Experiment Clogs In-Box for Weeks. The Wall Street Journal: A1.

Wellman, Barry and Milena Gulia. 1999. Net-Surfers Don’t Ride Alone: Virtual Communities as Communities. Pp. 331-366 in Networks in the Global Village, edited by Barry Wellman. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Anabel Quan-Haase and Barry Wellman. 2006. Hyperconnected Net Work: Computer Mediated Communication in a High-Tech Organization. In Charles Heckscher and Paul Adler (eds) Collaborative Community in Business and Society. New York: Oxford University Press.

Matzat, Uwe. 2004. Academic Communication and Internet Discussion Groups: Transfer of Information or Creation of Social Contacts? Social Networks 26(3): 221-255.

Wellman, Barry (2001). Physical Place and Cyber Place: The Rise of Personalized Networking. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 25(2), 227-252.

March 27 (Week 12) – Computer Networks as Social Networks II.

Hampton, Keith and Barry Wellman. (2003). Neighboring in Netville: How the Internet Supports Community and Social Capital in a Wired Suburb. City and Community 2(4), 277-311.

Hampton, Keith. (2003). Grieving For a Lost Network: Collective Action in a Wired Suburb. The Information Society 19(5), 417-428.

Hampton, Keith (forthcoming). E-Neighbors: Neighborhood Networks in the Information City. Information, Communication and Society.

Marlow, Cameron (2005). The Structural Determinants of Media Contagion. Ph.D. Dissertation. Media Laboratory, MIT.

April 3 (Week 13) - Social Inequality

Fernandez, Roberto and David Harris. 1992. Social Isolation and the Underclass. Pp. 257-293 in Drugs, Crime, and Social Isolation, edited by Adele Harrell and George Peterson: The Urban Institute.

Marsden, Peter, and Jeanne Hurlbert. 1988. Social Resources and Mobility Outcomes. Social Forces 66:1038-1059.

April 10 (Week 14) - Search Process and Information Flow

Lee, Nancy Howell. 1969. The Search for an Abortionist. University of Chicago Press. (Ch 5,8)

Tepperman, Lorne.1975. Deviance as a Search Process. Canadian Journal of Sociology 1 (3): 277-294.

Rogers, Everett. 1983. Diffusion Networks. Pp. 281-334 in Diffusion of Innovations. New York: The Free Press.

Valente, Thomas. 1995. Network Models of the Diffusion of Innovations. Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press Inc. [Ch. 3, 4].

Weimann, Gabriel. 1982. On the Importance of Marginality: One More Step into the Two-Step Flow of Communication. American Sociological Review 47(6): 764-773.

Coleman, James S., Elihu Katz, and H. Menzel. 1957. “The Diffusion of an Innovation Among Physicians.” Sociometry 20: 253-270.

Burt, Ronald. 1987. Social Contagion and Innovation: Cohesion Versus structural Equivalence. American Journal of Sociology 92(6): 1287-1335.

April 17 (Week 15) - Health

Cohen, S., Brissette, I., Doyle, W. J., & Skoner, D. P. 2000. Social Integration and Health: The Case of the Common Cold. Journal of Social Structure 1(3).

Dickens, C.M., L. McGowen, C. Percival, J. Douglas, B. Tomensen, L. Cotter, A Heagerty, and F.H. Creed. 2004. Lack of Close Confidant, but not Depression, Predicts Further Cardiac Events After Myocardial Infraction. Heart 90(5): 518-522.

Wylie, John and Jolly, Ann. (2001). Patterns of Chlamydia and Gonorrhea Infection in Sexual Networks in Manitoba, Canada. Sexually Transmitted Diseases. 28(1):14-24, January 2001