Sunbelt XXXI International Network for Social Network ... - INSNA

Social Network Resilience Given Information Error And IntermittencyMorgan, Geoffrey P.; Joseph, Kenneth; Martin, Michael K.; Carley, Kathleen M.Network CharacteristicsNetwork Socialization, Research Networks, Network Plasticity, Actor‐Based Stochastic Modeling, Network Matching, AgeWED.PM1This paper examines the resiliency of social networks of decision makers to the impact of two distinct factors: the amount of erroneous informationpropagated to decision makers, and the intermittency of access by decision‐makers to authoritative media sources. Each of several network topologies,including Scale‐Free (Barabási, 2003), Erdos‐Renyi (Barabási, Albert, and Jeong, 1999), and Cellular networks (Frantz and Carley, 2005), were evaluated forincreasing amounts of error and intermittency. To examine the impact of error, we used a rich social network simulation tool, Construct (Carley, 1990).Preliminary results indicate that decision makers embedded in cellular and scale‐free network structures may have non‐linear non‐monotonic responses indecision correctness to the amount of error distributed through their social networks. If these results are confirmed in further work, this may have importantconsequences to application areas in organizational structures and indicates an important area for further empirical research.Social Network Services, Gifts And ReciprocityKronenwett, Michael; Gamper, MarkusFriendship networksNetwork Analysis, ReciprocityWED.PM1This study analyses a social network service (called “partyface”) located in Germany. We analyze the complete network with about 100.000 members as well asapprox. 9 million friendship relations and about 800.000 “make a gift”‐relations. Among descriptive findings, for instance the distribution of age or gender, weanalyze how the geographic location of the users affects the formation of their friendship relations. Additionally we analyze the the structure of the giftnetwork. In the social network service users can receive or send virtual gifts from or to other users. We examine the reciprocity of receiving and sending virtualgifts and the connection between the centralization of an user and the amount of receiving or sending virtual gifts to or from other users.