SOCIAL NETWORKS

Social Networks - Development of Opinions on the Internet

Social networks - Development of opinions on the Internet

Introduction

Models of social networks depict individuals' dependency. They offer a systematic way to capture the connectedness and opinion formations in the complex web of interpersonal influences. This paper studies price stability of a capital market, where the dynamics of participants' opinion formations is formalized using social network models. Stability condition is derived. It is also identified how network structures are important in communications and in determining market stability. It is found that factors of highly-connected networks and balanced weight allocation on information sources can in fact be stabilizing. In applications, this study supports the view that the key to reduce the volatility behaviour of emerging-market securities lies in the development of an efficient investor base. It is suggested that one way to achieve this is by broadening and diversifying both the international and domestic investor categories for the underlying market.(Arakji,2006)

Models of social networks depict individuals' dependency; they offer a structural way to capture the connectedness and formation of opinions in the complex web of interpersonal influences. Network models have attracted increasing interest as they pave a promising foundation toward a better understanding of real-world phenomena.(Barnes,2007)

Online social networks

The newest attempts at the development of social networks have tried to create online social networks without relying upon an initial face-to-face encounter to create the network. Initially, Facebook relied more heavily on face-to-face contact, but increasingly friends are second-order contacts (friends of friends) or higher, or have not yet met (e.g., political action groups, or groups organized to assist in the orientation of freshman before they arrive on campus). In contrast, participants in Second Life, World of WarCraft, Flickr, and YouTube may never have met and may not intend to meet. In this work we distinguish between online support of traditional social networks, such as the use of email to replace telephone calls to schedule a meeting of a monthly book club, and the development of entirely new online communities, as seen in virtual reality websites, gaming websites, and other interactions among individuals who may never actually meet. These entirely new online networks we term virtual electronic social networks, (or ESNs); these networks may have intense interaction, and may achieve significant salience in the lives of their participants, but there may be no interaction among members other than within the ESNs.(Dellarocas,2003)

Ever since the internet began to develop online “communities,” there has been active debate about whether online communities actually replicate in crucial ways face-to-face networks. Howard Rheingold in a number of articles and books has been the strongest advocate of the depth and power of online communities as “actual” social networks that correspond in important ways to older forms of networking . Others, like John Perry Barlow, have suggested the opposite — that online communities are at best truncated networks, lacking in depth and intensity. In Barlow's view, participants in online social networks do not have to interact in multiple and complex ways but rather ...