Glossary
- Online Social Network:
-
A social network on the World Wide Web
- Social Network:
-
A set of individuals connected by a set of dyadic ties
- Tie:
-
A relationship between two individuals
Definition
Social order, a technical term from social sciences (Frank 1944), is the study of how social creatures (such as human beings) are both individual and social (Hechter and Horne 2003). As Hechter and Horne (2003) point out, social order occurs when individuals coordinate and cooperate with each other.
Social order in online social networks and the coordination and cooperation that give rise to them appear in many different structural forms. Examples include homophily, communities (a.k.a. groups), weak ties, structural holes, and social capital.
HomophilyThe notion of homophily (i.e., “of like attracting like”) has been around since the ancient Greeks. It is often quoted that Plato said, “Similarity begets friendship.” Previous research (McPherson et al. 2001) has shown that homophily is a...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Burt RS (2004) Structural holds and good ideas. Am J Sociol 110(2):349–399
Dunbar R (1998) Grooming, Gossip, and the evolution of language. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
Easley D, Kleinberg J (2010) Networks, crowds, and markets. Cambridge University Press, New York
Frank LK (1944) What is social order? Am J Sociol 49(5):470–477
Granovetter M (2003) The strength of ties. In: Hechter M, Horne C (eds) Theories of social order: a reader. Stanford University Press, Stanford, pp 323–332
Hechter M, Horne C (2003) Theories of social order: a reader. Stanford University Press, Stanford
Leskovec J, Lang K, Dasgupta A, Mahoney M (2008) Statistical properties of community structure in large social and information networks. In: The 17th international conference on World Wide Web, Beijing, pp 695–704
Leskovec J, Lang KJ, Mahoney MW (2010) Empirical comparison of algorithms for network community detection. In: The 19th international conference on World Wide Web, Raleigh, pp 631–640
McPherson M, Smith-Lovin L, Cook JM (2001) Birds of a feather: homophily in social networks. Ann Rev Sociol 27:415–444
Portes A (1998) Social capital: its origins and applications in modern sociology. Ann Rev Sociol 24:1–24
Recommended Reading
Blau P, Schwartz J (1997) Crosscutting social circles: testing a macro-structural theory of intergroup relations. Transaction Publishers, Piscataway
Burt RS (2005) Brokerage and closure: an introduction to social capital. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK
Gellner E (2003) Trust, cohesion, and the social order. In: Hechter M, Horne C (eds) Theories of social order: a reader. Stanford University Press, Stanford, pp 300–305
Henderon K, Eliassi-Rad T, Papadimitriou S, Faloutsos C (2010) HCDF: a hybrid community discovery framework. In: The 10th SIAM international conference on data mining, Columbus, pp 754–765
Lazarsfeld P, Merton RK (1954) Friendship as a social process: a substantive and methodological analysis. In: Berger M, Abel T, Page CH (eds) Freedom and control in modern society. Van Nostrand, Toronto, pp 18–66
Newman MEJ (2006) Modularity and community structure in networks. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 103:8577–8582
Simmel G (2003) The web of group-affiliations. In: Hechter M, Horne C (eds) Theories of social order: a reader. Stanford University Press, Stanford, pp 316–322
Watts D (2004) Six degrees: the science of a connected age. W.W. Norton & Company, New York
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Science+Business Media LLC, part of Springer Nature
About this entry
Cite this entry
Eliassi-Rad, T. (2018). Social Order in Online Social Networks. In: Alhajj, R., Rokne, J. (eds) Encyclopedia of Social Network Analysis and Mining. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7131-2_287
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7131-2_287
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-7130-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-7131-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceReference Module Computer Science and Engineering