Power in Networks
http://www.orgnet.com
Copyright © 2004, Valdis Krebs
They say the golden rule in Real Estate is:
Location,
Location, Location
. Might this rule also hold in social
networks? In real estate, location is determined by
geography – your
physical
location. In social networks,
location is determined by your connections and the
connections of those around you – your
virtual
location.
Two social network measures, Betweenness and Closeness,
are particularly revealing of a node’s advantageous or
constrained location in a network. The values of both
metrics are dependent upon the pattern of connections that
a node is embedded in. Betweenness measures the
control
a
node has over what flows in the network – how often is this
node on the path between other nodes? Closeness
measures how easily a node can
access
what is available
via the network – how quickly can this node reach all
others in the network? A combination where a node has
easy access to others,
while
controlling the access of other
nodes in the network, reveals high
informal power
.
We will look at a simple human network and watch how
power changes in the network based on connections made
and lost in the network over time