Social Networks

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]
Sumit Basu, Tanzeem Choudhury, Brian Clarkson and Alex (Sandy) Pentland, "Learning Human Interactions with the Influence Model", Media Lab Vision and Modeling Technical Report 539 (June 2001) [This is an interesting but rather special model for social influence: basically, one fits a model of pairwise influence for each dyad, and then predicts the behavior of a given individual by taking a weighted sum of the predictions of those models. So one needs to learn the pairwise model parameters and the prediction weights. Not at all obvious how to do specification testing in this framework... Thanks to Gustavo Lacerda and Kevin Murphy for the pointer]
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.]
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
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.]
Roger Th. A. J. Leenders, Structure and Influence: Statistical Models for the Dynamics of Actor Attributes, Network Structure and Their Interdependence [mini-review]
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
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]
S. Wasserman and K. Faust, Social Network Analysis [blurb]
Douglas R. White, Natasa Kejzar, Constantino Tsallis, Doyne Farmer and Scott White, "A generative model for feedback networks", cond-mat/0508028 = Physical Review E 73 (2006): 016119 [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?).]

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
Vilna Francine Bashi, Survival of the Knitted: Immigrant Social Networks in a Stratified World [Blurb]
N. Berger, C. Borgs, J. T. Chayes, R. M. D'Souza and R. D. Kleinberg, "Competition-Induced Preferential Attachment", cond-mat/0402268
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]
Yen-Sheng Chiang, "Birds of Moderately Different Feathers: Bandwagon Dynamics and the Threshold Heterogeneity of Network Neighbors", Journal of Mathematical Sociology 31 (2006): 47--69
David Chisholm, Coordination without Hierarchy: Informal Structures in Multiorganizational Systems [Blurb]
Miriam Cooke and Bruce B. Lawrence (eds.), Muslim Networks from Hajj to Hip Hop [Blurb]
Dora L. Costa and Matthew E. Kahn, Heroes and Cowards: The Social Face of War [Blurb, ch. 1]
Darren P. Croft, Richard James and Jens Krause, Exploring Animal Social Networks [blurb, ch. 1]
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
James Fowler, the why-people-vote papers
James H. Fowler and Nicholas A. Christakis, "Cooperative Behaviour Cascades in Human Social Networks", arxiv:0908.3497
Linton C. Freeman, The Development of Social Network Analysis
Noah E. Friedkin, A Structural Theory of Social Influence [Blurb]
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 [Blurb, introduction]
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 [New York: Independent Curators International, 2003, ISBN 0-916365-67-0. 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 [blurb, ch. 1]
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
Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence
Michael Kenney, From Pablo to Osama: Trafficking and Terrorist Networks, Government Bureaucracies, and Competitive Adaptation [Blurb]
Martin Kilduff and David Krackhardt, Interpersonal Networks in Organizations: Cognition, Personality, Dynamics, and Culture [blurb]
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
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 Franklin [blurb]
Edward O. Laumann, Stephen Ellingson, Jenna Mahay, and Anthony Paik (eds.), The Sexual Organization of the City ["The city" being Chicago. Blurb, intro]
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 [Blurb]
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
John Levi Martin, Social Structures [blurb]
Seth A. Marvel, Steven H. Strogatz, Jon M. Kleinberg, "The Energy Landscape of Social Balance", arxiv:0906.2893
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 [blurb]
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 [PDF; weblog commentary by Kieran Healy]
M. S. Mizurchi, The American Corporate Network, 1904--1974
Philippa Pattison, Algebraic Models for Social Networks [Blurb]
Sean Safford, Why the Garden Club Couldn't Save Youngstown: The Transformation of the Rust Belt [blurb]
Ozgur Simsek and David Jensen, "Navigating networks by using homophily and degree", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 105 (2008): 12758--12762 [Open access]
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
B. Ruyu and M. N. Kuperman, "Affinity driven social networks", nlin.AO/0703038
Recep Senturk, Narrative Social Structure: Anatomy of the Hadith Transmission Network, 610--1505 [blurb]
David A. Siegel, "The Media as Spur and Spoiler: A Theory of Multiple Influences on Collective Behavior" [Abstract: "I present a 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. I find that, contrary to conventional wisdom, neither increased connectivity in local networks nor an increased role for the media uniformly increases participation in collective behavior: in many cases both can decrease participation rates. Social elites who are unified in their interests can play an outsized role in determining participation, as can a biased media. The model I develop to derive these results additionally provides a powerful methodological tool for analyzing the impact that qualitative network structures can have on mass outcomes. " PDF preprint]
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 [Blurb]
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 [blurb, chapter 1]
- Identity and Control: How Social Formations Emerge [blurb, chapter 1]
Hal Whitehead, Analyzing Animal Societies: Quantitative Methods for Vertebrate Social Analysis [From the blurb and table of contents, it's not obvious to me why he has the adjective "vertebrate"...]
David Wilkinson, "Civilizations as Networks: Trade, War, Diplomacy, and Command-Control", Complexity 8 (2002): 82--86
H. Peyton Young, "The diffusion of innovations in social networks", in L. E. Blume and S. N. Durlauf (eds.), The Economy as an Evolving Complex System III (2003)
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

Notebooks

Social Networks