Summary - 4

Key point
1. New media technologies usually reinforce existing social networks or even work to isolate people.
2. (BUT) When new media technologies facilitate new social networks, they simultaneously challenge existing social, political and economic relationships.

Since their introduction, social network sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Cyworld, and Bebo have attracted millions of users, many of whom have integrated these sites into their daily practices. There are hundreds of SNSs, with various technological affordances, supporting a wide range of interests and practices. While their key technological features are fairly consistent, the cultures that emerge around SNSs are varied. Most sites support the maintenance of pre-existing social networks, but others help strangers connect based on shared interests, political views, or activities.

Social network analysis is an interdisciplinary social science, but has been of especial concern to sociologists; recently, physicists and mathematicians have made large contributions to understanding networks in general (as graphs) and thus contributed to an understanding of social networks too.

A social network is a social structure made of nodes that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, idea, financial exchange, friends, dislike, conflict, trade, web links, sexual relations, disease transmission (epidemiology), or airline routes. The resulting structures are often very complex.
Social network analysis views social relationships in terms of nodes and ties. Nodes are the individual actors within the networks, and ties are the relationships between the actors. There can be many kinds of ties between the nodes. Research in a number of academic fields has shown that social networks operate on many levels, from families up to the level of nations, and play a critical role in determining the way problems are solved, organizations are run, and the degree to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals.