Sincrético

It’s been hard to find time to write about anything nowadays…

Today I’m using the blog truly as a way of organizing my thoughts. I am having a bit of a hassle to organize my notes about networks and the spread of information. There are a couple of dimensions to cover. First, the technical aspects starting with graphs and their evolution to the modern manifestations of small-world networks and its subsequent variations such as — if I am correct — scale-free networks, including their inner structure, the connectedness of their nodes, their order and randomness and other technicalities.

Secondly, when specifically talking about social networks, there are issues such as the actors within them and the roles they play such as hubs and authorities, as well as the so-called “influentials” and their apparently marginal advantage in comparison to “normal” nodes in their capacity to spread information more efficiently (cf. Watts). One must not oversee the functions of strong and weak ties (cf. Granovetter), the former being part of tightly knit clusters formed of intimate connections and the latter functioning as bridges between different clusters on a network. Weak ties, according to Granovetter’s highly influential theory (1973), play an important role as bridges between different communities. Other social roles must be also taken in consideration, such as those of opinion leaders (Katz, Lazarsfeld 1955), innovators and early adopters in the diffusion of innovations (Rogers 2003) and more popular incarnations of “influentials” like those described by Gladwell (2000), among others.

Thirdly, with the social roles accounted for, we must, or I must :-), consider the spread of information and the dissemination of knowledge across networks, taking in considerations the several concepts and models that have been established in the analysis of social networks and in the “new” science of networks (Watts 2004). There are theories such as the SIR model (Susceptible, Infected, Recovered) which look at the spread of information from an epidemiological perspective with variants that take in consideration the “resistance” of nodes to contagion (thresholds). Other approaches include information cascades, percolation theories, the diffusion of innovation model of Rogers, among others. But their all share a similar aspect, that nodes can in way influence each other, depending on their ability to convince their neighborhood and the latter’s resistance these ideas, and also how connected nodes are to one another. If nodes are too tightly connected, cascades stay local, if they are too loosely connected to random parts of the networks cascades may disperse; there should be a compromise between looseness and density. Virtue lies in the mean as our good friend Aristotle would already say back in the day.

Anyway, this post has got much bigger than I expected. It however helped me in putting a mess to my thoughts. I’m starting to appreciate this blog thing… that is, if one is able to find the time to do it

Work referenced in this post:

Gladwell, M. (2000). The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. New York: Little, Brown and Company.

Granovetter, M. (1973). The Strength of Weak Ties. American Journal of Sociology , 78 (6), 1360.

Rogers, E. (2003). Diffusion of Innovations. Simon and Schuster.

Thomson, J. (1955). The Nicomachean Ethics. Penguin Books: London.

WATTS, D. (2004). The New science of networks. Annual review of sociology , 30 ,
243–270.

In the last few days I have gathered some time to read Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age from Duncan J. Watts, professor of sociology at the University of Columbia and The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference from Malcolm Gladwell, a New Yorker columnist and writer. In an earlier post, based on a article found a Fast Company, I have opposed the two, saying they were representing two different currents of thoughts in relation to the spread of ideas in the so-called web 2.0. I have to rectify myself: they are actually talking about very similar topics, albeit with varying degrees of optimism (and realism), different empirical foundations, and approaches.

Dr. Watts, the academic, the realist, is one of the leading figures of the science of networks, a relatively new discipline that draws its theoretical frameworks from physics, mathematics, biology, sociology and other sciences. His main object of study are small-world networks, a project that spans since his time in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at Cornell University, done in collaboration with his adviser Prof. Steve H. Strogratz. Revisiting the “Small World Experiment“, the seminal work of social psychologist Dr. Stanley Milgram which gave legs to the myth of the “Six Degrees of Separation“, Strogratz and Watts developed, with the help of modern computing muscle, a mathematical model to study the phenomenon, in which any given person can be connected to anyone in the world through a small chain of just five connections.

In his book Watts gives a very thorough explanation of the small-world phenomenon and other types of network, making a very solid case for the science of networks and its possible applications. The reading is insightful and the requirement of mathematical knowledge in order to understand it, close to none. As a man of science, Watts keeps a very critical view at the phenomenon and does not fully believe that trends can start by design: “… a series of small random events — events that would go unnoticed under normal conditions — can, at the critical point, push the system into a universally organized state, giving the appearance of having been directed there strategically.” In another passage, he maintains that “… a successful cascade [information cascade, in the language of economics] has far less to with the actual characteristics of the innovation or even the innovator, than we tend to think”, describing that a seed alone is not enough, that trees spread their seeds hoping they will land in the right place.

Gladwell is a trained science journalist and has been able to amass an interesting body of ad-hoc knowledge for his work. He’s although a bit more optimistic than Watts when it comes to the phenomenon of social contagion, or word-of-mouth epidemics. His theory is manifested in three concepts: The Law of the Few, The Stickiness Factor and The Power of Context. The first deals with “gatekeepers”, people that are able to start a social epidemic. Gladwell names them Connectors, those with very high social capital; Mavens, people with extraordinary knowledge and with a social motivation to spread it; and Salesmen, individuals with a high capacity of persuasion. The second part of theory explains how certain ideas posses a higher capacity of maintaining themselves for longer in the collective psyche, by having a higher stickiness factor. Lastly, Gladwell considers how having the proper context, or to change an existing one, is also a necessary condition to start a social epidemic.

Watts deals with a larger topic, the science of networks, but one is able to find in his work some scientific rationale to support the ideas proposed by Gladwell. Gladwell sustains a top-down, pyramid-like network, what Duncan describes in his book a “scale-free network” (Barabási and Albert, 1999), governed by a “power law”. In these networks, highly connected individuals “can have an influence that is disproportionate to their number”, ergo the Connectors, who are highly connected nodes within the network. They both explain, with varying degrees of empirical evidence and examples, that there is a moment in which ideas, trends, innovations or diseases catch on and propagate exponentially within networks, this phenomenon is called by Gladwell, the tipping point, and critical point by Watts, who says “… these changes of state are not steady and gradual, but sudden. One second is raining, the next snowing.”

The two books are by no means whatever an exhaustive explication, but they have served as a good introduction to the topic. I regret however my reading order. I started with the more scientific oriented work of Watts and moved to Gladwell’s rather business-like journalist approach to the subject. I would reverse the order if I would have to read them again.