Weak ties are thought to facilitate the diffusion of information through social networks because of their tendency to span otherwise distant subgroups. However, this logic assumes that weak relationships have the same capacity to transmit information as those that are strong. I argue that weak ties, especially the kind that span subgroups, are often also lower-capacity. Due to a lack of trust, ...

The Strength of Weak Ties and Brokerage Theory rely on the argument that weak bridging ties deliver novel information to brokers. Yet, very little empirical evidence exists to validate this claim. Analyzing an evolving corporate email network, we investigate the dynamic mechanisms that enable the “vision advantage”. Three results emerge. First, we confirm the Diversity-Bandwidth Tradeoff at the...

Social dynamics explaining communication among individuals and social relationships represent a major field of investigation in the current scenario of online social network research, whose importance and impact in everyday life is growing at unprecedented rate. This work reports our quantitative assessment of so-called strength of weak ties theory, foreseen by Granovetter’s seminal studies, ap...

Background : Controlling global epidemics in the real world and accelerating information propagation in the artificial world are of great significance, which have activated an upsurge in the studies on networked spreading dynamics. Lots of efforts have been made to understand the impacts of macroscopic statistics (e.g., degree distribution and average distance) and mesoscopic structures (e.g., ...

This paper examines whether the information sources used by knowledge workers have an impact on individual performance and creativity. Although it is widely recognized that new knowledge is created through the combination and exchange of existing knowledge, there is a large variety of knowledge sources available to individuals. In this study, we examine whether individual performance varies as ...

Recent research suggests that people obtain useful knowledge from others with whom they work closely and frequently (i.e., strong ties). Yet there has been limited empirical work examining why this is so. Moreover, other research suggests that weak ties provide useful knowledge. To help integrate these multiple findings, we propose and test a model of two-party (dyadic) knowledge exchange, with...

“The Strength of Weak Ties” argument (Granovetter 1973) says that the most valuable information is best collected through bridging ties with other social circles than one’s own, and that those ties tend to be weak. Aral and Van Alstyne (2011) added that to access complex information, actors need strong ties (“high bandwidth”) instead. These insights I integrate and generalize by pointing at act...

GrunouetterS Strength of weak ties’ theory offers a satisfying approach to the study of integration in networks of face-to-face interaction consisting of ~~~~tip~e subgroups. The present paper tests five hypotheses of this t~~eor,v in the setting of a n~~~t~dis~ip~inary social network of bioIogica1 scientists. Considerable support for the theory is indicated: the local bridges and intergroup ti...

Due to advances of technology including faster and ubiquitously accessible Internet connection, on-line gaming have grown tremendously in the last couple of years. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether escapist motives for playing games are linked to strengthening of weak ties through on-line gaming. The research investigates Facebook and other on-line games separately. A surprising r...

The importance of weak social ties in professional communities is well studied and widely accepted. In our paper we analyze the structure of strong ties based on the co-authorship relation and use the formal concept analysis framework to figure out weak ties. The research is motivated by fast growing need in cross-disciplinary research, which requires experts from different areas to understand ...