Social Networks

03 Apr 2013 16:36

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Although many of the relevant papers appear in the journal Social Networks, published by Elsevier, the company responsible for deliberately publishing pseudo-journals such as The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, I know of no particular reason to believe that their findings are problematic. It would, however, be good if the community could shift to a journal whose publishers do not subvert the peer-review process whenever they find it profitable to do so.

See also: Community Discovery; Complex Networks; Homophily vs. Influence; Institutions and Organizations; Joint Modeling of Text and Networks; Network Data Analysis; Networks of Political Actors; Social Contagion; Sociology; Sociology of Science; Terrorism

Recommended, big picture:
• David Easley and Jon Kleinberg, Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning about a Highly Connected World
• John Levi Martin, Social Structures
• Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Loving and James M. Cook, "Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks", Annual Review of Sociology 27 (2001): 415--444
• S. Wasserman and K. Faust, Social Network Analysis [See under Analysis of Network Data]

Recommended (very misc. and inadequate):
• R. Alberich, J. Miro-Julia and F. Rossello, "Marvel Universe looks almost like a real social network," cond-mat/0202174 [The small world of superhero comic books. Of course, in the end, we are all connected via Death --- whoops, wrong mythos.]
• John Arquilla, David Ronfeldt, Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy [From RAND, the people who brought you the American strategy in Indochina. But nonetheless interesting. Online.]
• Wayne E. Baker, Achieving Success through Social Capital: Tapping the Hidden Resources in Your Personal and Business Networks [Don't snicker so. Baker is actually very good on social networks, and does a nice job of explaining the ideas here, in the service of helping people do better in their professional lives. The first chapter, "What Is Social Capital and Why Should You Care About It?", is available for free as a PDF]
• Wayne E. Baker and Robert R. Faulkner, "Social Networks and Loss of Capital", Social Networks 26 (2004): 91--111 [If you must invest in a dodgy company, be friends with the management. PDF]
• Peter S. Bearman, James Moody and Katherine Stovel, "Chains of Affection: The Structure of Adolescent Romantic and Sexual Networks", American Journal of Sociology 110 (2004): 44--91 [PDF]
• Vaughan Bell, C. Maiden, A. Munoz-Solomando and V. Reddy, "'Mind control experiences' on the internet: Implications for the psychiatric diagnosis of delusions", Psychopathology 39 (2006): 87--91 [pdf; my comments]
• Randall Collins, The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change [Many very interesting observations on how social network structure can facilitate and shape intellectual development, backed up by a massive, global acquaintance with the history of philosophy. His own philosophical conclusions, e.g. about realism, seem to me however astonishingly bad --- naive social constructionism.]
• Steven M. Goodreau, James A. Kitts and Martina Morris, "Birds of a Feather, Or Friend of a Friend?: Using Exponential Random Graph Models to Investigate Adolescent Social Networks", Demography 46 (2009): 103--125 [In addition to the substantive findings, this is a great introduction to the "exponential-family random graph model" (ERGM) approach to modeling complex networks.]
• Thomas X. Hammes, "Countering Evolved Insurgent Networks", Military Review (July-August 2006): 18--26 ["Insurgency is a competition between human networks. We must understand that salient fact before can we develop and execute a plan to defeat the insurgents."]
• Shin-Kap Han, "Tribal regimes in academia: a comparative analysis of market structure across disciplines", Social Networks 25 (2003): 251--280 [Commentary by Kieran Healy]
• Kieran Healy, "The Performativity of Networks" [PDF. My comments.]
• Stephen Judd, Michael Kearns, and Yevgeniy Vorobeychik, "Behavioral dynamics and influence in networked coloring and consensus", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107 (2010): 14978--14982 [Comments under collective cognition]
• Judith Kleinfeld, "Could It Be a Big World After All? What the Milgram Papers in the Yale Archive Reveal About the Original Small World Study" [Six degrees of separation, for the general population, is quite unsupported empirically. Of course it works for other kinds of networks, e.g., people in a common profession, or participating in a common institution; but that's different. Preprint.]
• Winter A. Mason, Andy Jones and Robert L. Goldstone, "Propagation of Innovations in Networked Groups", Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 137 (2008): 427--433 [See under collective cognition]
• Barbara J. Mills, Jeffery J. Clark, Matthew A. Peeples, W. R. Haas, Jr., John M. Roberts, Jr., J. Brett Hill, Deborah L. Huntley, Lewis Borck, Ronald L. Breiger, Aaron Clauset, and M. Steven Shackley, "Transformation of social networks in the late pre-Hispanic US Southwest", PNAS forthcoming (2013)
• James Moody and Douglas R. White, "Social Cohesion and Embeddedness: A Hierarchical Conception of Social Groups", American Sociological Review 68 (2003): 103--127 [PDF preprint via Doug's website]
• John F. Padgett and Christopher K. Ansell, "Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici, 1400--1434", American Journal of Sociology 98 (1993): 1259--1319 [JSTOR]
• Robin Pemantle and Brian Skyrms, "Network formation by reinforcement learning: the long and medium run", math.PR/0404106
• David A. Siegel, "When Does Repression Work? Collective Behavior Under the Threat of Violence" [Detailed model involving adaptive social learning, shaped by the network structure, targeted repression, and mass media, with some applications to the Iraqi elections at the start of 2005. One wonders if there isn't some way of extracting analytical results, rather than just simulations... PDF preprint]
• Brian Skyrms and Robin Pemantle, "A Dynamic Model of Social Network Formation", math.PR/0404101 = Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 97 (2000): 9340--9346
• Troy Tassier's work on labor markets and social networks is very cool, but I can't recommend particular papers because he explained it to me while we were office mates...
• Charles Tilly
  • Trust and Rule [Mini-review]
  • "Cities, states, and trust networks: chapter 1 of Cities and States in World History", Theory and Society 39 (2010): 265--280
• Douglas R. White, Natasa Kejzar, Constantino Tsallis, Doyne Farmer and Scott White, "A generative model for feedback networks", Physical Review E 73 (2006): 016119, cond-mat/0508028 [I find the growth model here very interesting, because it breaks with the now-usual "preferential attachment" mechanism. I think this model would repay very careful attention, both dynamically (could one map this onto preferential attachment in some meaningful way?) and statistically (what is the limiting degree distribution, and how does it vary with the growth parameters?).]
• Douglas R. White and Karl P. Reitz, "Graphs and Semigroup Homomorphisms on Networks of Relations", Social Networks 5 (1984): 143--234 [PDF via Doug]

To read:
• Daron Acemoglu, Asuman Ozdaglar, Ali ParandehGheibi, "Spread of Misinformation in Social Networks", arxiv:0906.5007
• Katharine Anderson
  • "Optimal Institutional Design in Sequential Coalition Formation Games with a Network Constraint"
  • "An Agent-based Model of Matching with Endogenous Preferences"
• A.-L. Barabasi, H. Jeong, Z. Neda, Erzsebet Ravasz, A. Schubert and T. Vicsek, "Evolution of the social network of scientific collaborations," cond-mat/0104162
• M. J. Barber, A. Krueger, T. Krueger, T. Roediger-Schluga, "The Network of European Research and Development Projects", physics/0509119
• Adriano Barra, Elena Agliari, "A statistical mechanics approach to Granovetter theory", arxiv:1012.1272
• Vilna Francine Bashi, Survival of the Knitted: Immigrant Social Networks in a Stratified World
• N. Berger, C. Borgs, J. T. Chayes, R. M. D'Souza and R. D. Kleinberg, "Competition-Induced Preferential Attachment", cond-mat/0402268
• Jason D. Boardman, Benjamin W. Domingue, and Jason M. Fletcher, "How social and genetic factors predict friendship networks" Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109 (2012): 17377--17381 [The correction only concerns acknowledgments]
• Marian Boguna, Romualdo Pastor-Satorras, Albert Diaz-Guilera and Alex Arenas, "Models of social networks based on social distance attachment", Physical Review E 70 (2004): 056122
• Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, "Persistent Parochialism: Trust and Exclusion in Ethnic Networks", Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (2004) [Abstract, with link to full text]
• Ronald S. Burt, Brokerage and Closure: An Introduction to Social Capital
• Horacio Castellini and Lilia Romanelli, "Social network from communities of electronic mail", nlin.CD/0509021
• Damon Centola and Michael W. Macy, "Complex Contagion and the Weakness of Long Ties", American Journal of Sociology submitted [PDF preprint via Macy]
• Myong-Hun Chang and Joseph E. Harrington, "Discovery and Diffusion of Knowledge in an Endogenous Social Network", American Journal of Sociology 110 (2005): 937--976
• David Chisholm, Coordination without Hierarchy: Informal Structures in Multiorganizational Systems
• Drew Conway, "Networks, Collective Action, and State Formation"
• Miriam Cooke and Bruce B. Lawrence (eds.), Muslim Networks from Hajj to Hip Hop
• Dora L. Costa and Matthew E. Kahn, Heroes and Cowards: The Social Face of War
• Darren P. Croft, Richard James and Jens Krause, Exploring Animal Social Networks
• Joern Davidsen, Holger Ebel, and Stefan Bornholdt, "Emergence of a small world from local interactions: Modeling acquaintance networks," cond-mat/0108302
• G. F. Davis and H. R. Greve, "Corporate elite networks and governance changes in the 1980s", American Journal of Sociology 103 (1997): 1--37
• G. F. Davis, M. Yoo and W. E. Baker, "The small world of the corporate elite"
• Mario Diani and Doug McAdam (eds.), Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approaches to Collective Action
• T. Di Matteo, T. Aste and M. Gallegati, "Innovation flow through social networks: Productivity distribution", physics/0406091 [Those look an awful lot like log-normals to me.]
• Patrick Doreian
  • "Actor network utilities and network evolution", Social Networks 28 (2006): 137--164
  • "Causality in Social Network Analysis", Sociological Methods and Research 30 (2001): 81--114
• George C. M. A. Ehrhardt, Matteo Marsili, and Fernando Vega-Redondo, "Emergence and resilience of social networks: a general theoretical framework", physics/0504124
• Claude S. Fischer, To Dwell among Friends: Personal Networks in Town and City
• Andreas Flache and Tobias Stark, "Preference or opportunity? Why do we find more friendship segregation in more heterogeneous schools?", arxiv:0901.2825
• Linton C. Freeman, The Development of Social Network Analysis
• J.B. Glattfelder, S. Battiston, "Backbone of complex networks of corporations: The flow of control", Physical Review E 80 (2009): 036104, arxiv:0902.0878
• T.L. Goedeke and S. Rikoon, "Otters as Actors: Scientific Controversy, Dynamism of Networks, and the Implications of Power in Ecological Restoration", Social Studies of Science 38 (2008): 111--132
• Sanjeev Goyal, Connections: An Introduction to the Economics of Networks
• A. Grabowski and R. A. Kosinski, "Life span in online communities", Physical Review E 82 (2010): 066108 [Mostly for the promised results about rumor propagation when people enter and leave the network]
• Mark Granovetter, Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers
• Matthew Haag and Roger Lagunoff, "Social Norms, Local Interaction, and Neighborhood Planning," ewp-game/9907004
• Robert Hobbs, Mark Lombardi: Global Networks [Lombardi produced more-than-slightly paranoid network diagrams of political-financial-intelligence malfeasance, which seem less than perfectly reliable, but of some artistic value...]
• Petter Holme, Christofer R. Edling and Frederik Liljeros, "Structure and time evolution of an Internet dating community", Social Networks 26 (2004): 155-174
• Robert Huckfeldt, Paul E. Johnson and John Sprague, Political Disagreement: The Survival of Diverse Opinions within Communication Networks
• Eiko Ikegami, Bonds of Civility: Aesthetic Networks and the Political Origins of Japanese Culture [This sounds very cool: "uncovers a complex history of social life in which aesthetic images became central to Japan's cultural identities. The people of premodern Japan built on earlier aesthetic traditions in part for their own sake, but also to find space for self-expression in the increasingly rigid and tightly controlled Tokugawa political system. In so doing, they incorporated the world of the beautiful within their social life which led to new modes of civility. They explored horizontal and voluntary ways of associating while immersing themselves in aesthetic group activities."]
• Matthew O. Jackson, Social and Economic Networks
• Matthew O. Jackson, Tomas Rodriguez-Barraquer and Xu Tan, "Social Capital and Social Quilts: Network Patterns of Favor Exchange", American Economic Review 102 (2012): 1857--1897
• Charles Kadushin
  • "Too Much Investment in Social Capital?", Social Networks 26 (2004): 75--90 [Review essay on recent books on the social capital concept]
  • "Personal Influence: A Radical Theory of Action", The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 608 (2006): 270--281
  • Understanding Social Networks: Theories, Concepts, and Findings
• Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence
• Michael Kenney, From Pablo to Osama: Trafficking and Terrorist Networks, Government Bureaucracies, and Competitive Adaptation
• Martin Kilduff and David Krackhardt, Interpersonal Networks in Organizations: Cognition, Personality, Dynamics, and Culture
• Konstantin Klemm, Victor M. Eguiluz, Raul Toral and Maxi San Miguel, "Nonequilibrium transitions in complex networks: A model of social interaction," Physical Review E 67 (2003): 026120
• Bruce Kogut (ed.), The Small Worlds of Corporate Governance
• Geuorgi Kossinets and Duncan J. Watts, "Empirical Analysis of an Evolving Social Network", Science 311 (2006): 88--90
• Pamela Walker Laird, Pull: Networking and Success since Benjamin FranklinEdward O. Laumann, Stephen Ellingson, Jenna Mahay, and Anthony Paik (eds.), The Sexual Organization of the City ["The city" being Chicago.]
• Claire Lemercier, "Formal network methods in history: why and how?", halshs-00521527
• Nan Lin, Social Capital: A Theory of Social Structure and Action
• James R. Lincoln and Michael L. Gerlach, Japan's Network Economy: Structure, Peristence, and Change
• Omar Lizardo, "How Cultural Tastes Shape Personal Networks" [PDF preprint]
• David Lusseau, "Evidence for social role in a dolphin social network", q-bio/PE/0607048
• David Lusseau and M. E. J. Newman, "Identifying the role that individual animals play in their social network", q-bio.PE/0403029
• Seth A. Marvel, Steven H. Strogatz, Jon M. Kleinberg, "The Energy Landscape of Social Balance", arxiv:0906.2893
• Scott D. McClurg, Anand Sokhey and J. Drew Seib, "Examining Mechanisms of Political Disagreement" [Political Networks Paper Archive 55]
• Cathleen McGrath and David Krackhardt, "Network Conditions for Organizational Change", The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 39 (2003): 324--336 [PDF reprint]
• P. K. McGregor (ed.), Animal Communication Networks
• Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin and Matthew E. Brashears, "Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades", American Sociological Review 71 (2006): 353--375 [commentary by Kieran Healy]
• M. S. Mizurchi, The American Corporate Network, 1904--1974
• Anthony Paik and Kenneth Sanchagrin, "Social Isolation in America: An Artifact", SSRN/2101146
• Andrew V. Papachristos, "Murder by Structure: Dominance Relations and the Social Structure of Gang Homicide", American Journal of Socioloy 115 (2009): 74--128
• Philippa Pattison, Algebraic Models for Social Networks
• Craig M. Rawlings, Daniel M. McFarland, Linus Dahlander, Dan Wang, "Streams of Thought: How Ties Form and Influence Flows among New Faculty" [PDF preprint]
• Bertrand M. Roehner, Driving Forces in Physical, Biological and Socio-economic Phenomena: A Network Science Investigation of Social Bonds and Interactions
• Camille Roth, "Measuring Generalized Preferential Attachment in Dynamic Social Networks", nlin.AO/0507021
• Deidre A. Royster, Race and the Invisible Hand: How White Networks Exclude Black Men from Blue-Collar Jobs
• Giovanni Roberto Ruffini, Social Networks in Byzantine Egypt
• B. Ruyu and M. N. Kuperman, "Affinity driven social networks", nlin.AO/0703038
• Sean Safford, Why the Garden Club Couldn't Save Youngstown: The Transformation of the Rust Belt
• Rossano Schifanella, Alain Barrat, Ciro Cattuto, Benjamin Markines, Filippo Menczer, "Folks in Folksonomies: Social Link Prediction from Shared Metadata", arxiv:1003.2281 [and in WSDM 2010 conference proceedings]
• David A. Siegel, "The Media as Spur and Spoiler: A Theory of Multiple Influences on Collective Behavior" [Abstract: "model of interdependent collective behavior under the influence of both local social networks and a mass media. Individual interests are heterogeneous, and people choose whether or not to participate in the behavior based on a comparison of subjective costs and benefits. Costs are updated in response to the activities of both their social neighbors and the population as a whole; people obtain information about the latter from the media. ... neither increased connectivity in local networks nor an increased role for the media uniformly increases participation in collective behavior ... Social elites who are unified in their interests can play an outsized role in determining participation, as can a biased media." PDF preprint]
• Ozgur Simsek and David Jensen, "Navigating networks by using homophily and degree", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 105 (2008): 12758--12762
• Christian Steglich, Philip Sinclair, Jo Holliday and Laurence Moore, "Actor-based analysis of peer influence in A Stop Smoking In Schools Trial (ASSIST)", Social Networks forthcoming (2010)
• Grahame F. Thompson, Between Hierarchies and Markets: The Logic and Limits of Network Forms of Organization
• Charles Tilly
  • Identities, Boundaries, and Social Ties
  • Stories, Identities, and Political Change
• Namatié Traoré, "Networks and Rapid Technological Change: Novel Evidence from the Canadian Biotech Industry", Industry and Innovation 13 (2006): 41--68
• Federico Varese, "How Mafias Migrate: The Case of the`Ndrangheta in Northern Italy", Law and Society Review 40 (2006): 411--444 [PDF reprint]
• Katherine Cramer Walsh, Talking about Politics: Informal Groups and Social Identity in American Life
• Frank E. Walter, Stefano Battiston, Frank Schweitzer, "A Model of a Trust-based Recommendation System on a Social Network", nlin.AO/0611054
• Duncan J. Watts, Peter S. Dodds and Mark E. J. Newman, "Identity and Search in Social Networks," cond-mat/0205383 = Science 296 (2002): 1302--1305
• Harrison White
  • Markets from Networks: Socioeconomic Models of Production
  • Identity and Control: How Social Formations Emerge
• Hal Whitehead, Analyzing Animal Societies: Quantitative Methods for Vertebrate Social Analysis [It's not obvious to me why he has the adjective "vertebrate"...]
• Meredith A. Whiteman and John T. Scholz, "Social Capital in Coordination Experiments: Risk, Trust and Position" [Political Networks Paper Archive #50]
• David Wilkinson, "Civilizations as Networks: Trade, War, Diplomacy, and Command-Control", Complexity 8 (2002): 82--86
• Li Zhang, Strangers in the City: Reconfigurations of Space, Power, and Social Networks Within China's Floating Population
• W.-X. Zhou, D. Sornette, R. A. Hill and R. I. M. Dunbar, "Discrete Hierarchical Organization of Social Group Sizes", cond-mat/0403299