Similarity breeds connection. This principle—the homophily principle—structures network ties of every type, including marriage, friendship, work, advice, support, information transfer, exchange, comembership, and other types of relationship. The result is that people's personal networks are homogeneous with regard to many sociodemographic, behavioral, and intrapersonal characteristics. Homophily limits people's social worlds in a way that has powerful implications for the information they receive, the attitudes they form, and the interactions they experience. Homophily in race and ethnicity creates the strongest divides in our personal environments, with age, religion, education, occupation, and gender following in roughly that order. Geographic propinquity, families, organizations, and isomorphic positions in social systems all create contexts in which homophilous relations form. Ties between nonsimilar individuals also dissolve at a higher rate, which sets the stage for the formation of niches (localize...

/pdf/birds-of-a-feather-homophily-in-social-networks-3kjmeyr23w.pdf

Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks

This study examines the relationship between use of Facebook, a popular online social network site, and the formation and maintenance of social capital. In addition to assessing bonding and bridging social capital, we explore a dimension of social capital that assesses one’s ability to stay connected with members of a previously inhabited community, which we call maintained social capital. Regression analyses conducted on results from a survey of undergraduate students (N = 286) suggest a strong association between use of Facebook and the three types of social capital, with the strongest relationship being to bridging social capital. In addition, Facebook usage was found to interact with measures of psychological well-being, suggesting that it might provide greater benefits for users experiencing low self-esteem and low life satisfaction.

/pdf/the-benefits-of-facebook-friends-social-capital-and-college-2j90l44gqu.pdf

The Benefits of Facebook “Friends:” Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites

Over the past decade, there has been an explosion of interest in network research across the physical and social sciences. For social scientists, the theory of networks has been a gold mine, yielding explanations for social phenomena in a wide variety of disciplines from psychology to economics. Here, we review the kinds of things that social scientists have tried to explain using social network analysis and provide a nutshell description of the basic assumptions, goals, and explanatory mechanisms prevalent in the field. We hope to contribute to a dialogue among researchers from across the physical and social sciences who share a common interest in understanding the antecedents and consequences of network phenomena.

/pdf/network-analysis-in-the-social-sciences-440fzedv4c.pdf

Network Analysis in the Social Sciences

Using computer databases of scientific papers in physics, biomedical research, and computer science, we have constructed networks of collaboration between scientists in each of these disciplines. In these networks two scientists are considered connected if they have coauthored one or more papers together. Here we study a variety of nonlocal statistics for these networks, such as typical distances between scientists through the network, and measures of centrality such as closeness and betweenness. We further argue that simple networks such as these cannot capture variation in the strength of collaborative ties and propose a measure of collaboration strength based on the number of papers coauthored by pairs of scientists, and the number of other scientists with whom they coauthored those papers.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/cond-mat/0011144.pdf

Scientific collaboration networks. II. Shortest paths, weighted networks, and centrality

The authors develop and estimate a conceptual model of how different aspects of customers' relationships with the brand community influence their intentions and behaviors. The authors describe how identification with the brand community leads to positive consequences, such as greater community engagement, and negative consequences, such as normative community pressure and (ultimately) reactance. They examine the moderating effects of customers' brand knowledge and the brand community's size and test their hypotheses by estimating a structural equation model with survey data from a sample of European car club members.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/30162054.pdf

The Social Influence of Brand Community: Evidence from European Car Clubs

When computer networks link people as well as machines, they become social networks. Such computer-supported social networks (CSSNs) are becoming important bases of virtual communities, computer-supported cooperative work, and telework. Computer-mediated communication such as electronic mail and computerized conferencing is usually text-based and asynchronous. It has limited social presence, and on-line communications are often more uninhibited, creative, and blunt than in-person communication. Nevertheless, CSSNs sustain strong, intermediate, and weak ties that provide information and social support in both specialized and broadly based relationships. CSSNs foster virtual communities that are usually partial and narrowly focused, although some do become encompassing and broadly based. CSSNs accomplish a wide variety of cooperative work, connecting workers within and between organizations who are often physically dispersed. CSSNs also link teleworkers from their homes or remote work centers to main organi...

/pdf/computer-networks-as-social-networks-collaborative-work-2kxvqengjv.pdf

Computer Networks as Social Networks: Collaborative Work, Telework, and Virtual Community

Can people use the Internet to find community? Can online relationships between people who never see, smell, or hear each other be supportive and intimate?

/pdf/net-surfers-don-t-ride-alone-virtual-communities-as-2mmjuhlmls.pdf

Net-Surfers Don’t Ride Alone: Virtual Communities as Communities

Since the early 1970s, social network analysis has led sociology away from sterile polemics about whether modern times have destroyed community. The organizing concept of the personal community network has led analysts to study the composition, structure and contents of people's ties with friends, kin, neighbors, workmates, and acquaintances, wherever located and whomever with. This chapter investigates the extent to which the properties of personal community networks—their range, availability, kin dominance, and composition—shape the kinds and amount of resources that flow through these networks. Using evidence from the Toronto area, the chapter examines the extent to which different types of personal community networks provide high aggregate volumes and per capita rates of social support. It then relates structural and compositional properties of these networks to the occurrence of four distinct types of social support: empathetic companionship, emotional aid, supportive services, and financial aid. The chapter also investigates which network characteristics better facilitate the delivery of different kinds of social support.

The Network Basis of Social Support: A Network Is More Than the Sum of Its Ties

This paper examines the neighborhood qualities of major ethnic groups in Canada. Using data drawn from the 1991 census 2B file and special tabulations requested from the Statistics Canada, we found that the British, northern Europeans, and western Europeans live in neighborhoods with desirable social qualities without paying higher costs, even after controlling for socioeconomic status, immigration period, and generations. On the other hand, we also found that southern Europeans, Asians, and Blacks live in neighborhoods with less desirable social qualities, despite paying expensive housing costs. In particular, most neighborhood qualities of Blacks are consistently seen as least desirable.



Summary

Neighborhood qualities vary among major racial and ethnic groups in Canada. Compared to other groups, the British, northern Europeans, and western Europeans are living in neighborhoods with better social environments without paying the cost of living in neighborhoods with expensive housing. Southern Europeans, Asians, and Blacks clearly are living in neighborhoods with less desirable social environments, even when living in areas with expensive housing. In particular, the neighborhood qualities of Blacks are consistently seen as the least desirable. However, there are not the extreme spatially disadvantaged conditions for Blacks in Canada that there are in the United States. This may reflect the sociohistorical differences between Blacks in the two countries. Most Blacks in Canada immigrated after 1970, whereas Blacks in the United States have suffered from poverty, segregation, and the deliberate construction of ghettos for many years earlier.



The results further show that although neighborhood qualities of each group improve when educational levels rise and when they have been in Canada longer, the differences among groups do not decrease. In addition, the data show a consistent pattern that, although the British and other older immigrant groups do not pay a higher cost for housing, they continue to live in neighborhoods with better social environments. This pattern remains the same even when we consider the population that is Canadian-born. The regression results suggest that the consistent difference in neighborhood qualities among groups may relate to the process that minorities, especially Blacks, are less able to translate their socioeconomic resources into better neighborhood qualities.



This study clearly shows the undeniable fact that there are persistent patterns of differences in neighborhood qualities in Canada. This stable hierarchy of neighborhood qualities may in turn strongly affect the opportunities of different groups and their future achievements. The aspirations and expectations of children living in neighborhoods with higher percentages of unemployed residents and families on welfare will definitely be affected.



The findings of this study also point out that race and ethnicity play an important part in organizing Canadian society. Although groups in general improve their neighborhood qualities with socioeconomic achievements, the patterns of differences in neighborhood qualities remain. Race and ethnicity strongly affect the social well-being of groups in Canadian society through the unequal distribution of residential locations.



The study has suggested several directions for future research. First, there should be further study of the reasons why southern Europeans, in comparison to other European groups, live in less desirable neighborhoods. The census data employed in the current research may not be able to disentangle factors affecting the neighborhood qualities of southern Europeans. Future research could determine how much their neighborhood qualities reflect the result of involuntary or voluntary segregation. In addition, future research should employ multilevel analysis to study how segregation levels of various racial/ethnic groups at the city level relate to their socioeconomic achievements, which in turn affect their residential patterns.

Differences in neighborhood qualities among racial and ethnic groups in Canada

This paper examines the neighborhoodpatterns in three major Canadian metropolitan areasbetween 1986 and 1991. Data are obtained from 1986 and1991 profile census files and two Special Tabulationsof 1986 and 1991 Canadian census. The data indicatethat the first pathway of neighborhood change is thediversification that takes place among charter-onlyneighborhoods with the introduction of a sizableEuropean presence, followed by Asians and then blacks. The second pathway featuring racial uniformityprimarily takes place in multi-ethnic neighborhoodscontaining one or more visible minority groups. Multivariate analysis suggests that the increase inracial and ethnic diversity in neighborhoods isrelated to the efforts of visible minorities,especially Asians, seeking out neighborhoods withEuropeans.

Milena Gulia

Papers

Computer Networks as Social Networks: Collaborative Work, Telework, and Virtual Community

Net-Surfers Don’t Ride Alone: Virtual Communities as Communities

The Network Basis of Social Support: A Network Is More Than the Sum of Its Ties

Differences in neighborhood qualities among racial and ethnic groups in Canada

Neighborhood change within the Canadian ethnic mosaic, 1986–1991