Facebook Helps Prove Triadic Closure Property
I was in my freshman writing seminar and we had to read this article by Sofia Kaliarnta about internet friendship. I immediately thought about networking and this class. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-016-9384-2
“Friends are defined as people who ‘must be mutually recognized as bearing goodwill and wishing well to other’”, according to Aristotle’s theory of friendship. Kaliarnta Nowadays people are constantly using the internet to do everything. Why not use the same methodology to speak with and make friends online? Communication is so prevalent online, so communicating in the same fashion is also convenient, frequent, and a great way to talk to friends. Facebook and other social media sites help connect you to friends of friends. When you introduce yourself and interact with a mutual friend, in person, you tend to discuss topics that are far up above the surface: marriage, religion, interests, etc. When you speak with a person online for the first time, these topics are inevitably avoided. On a person’s profile all of this information is present, thus it does not need to be discussed in an introductory conversation. This can also help “screen” a person. If the information presented on one’s profile shows incompatibility with the person reading it, the reader will not and should not reach out to the person. Cocking/Matthews make the point that online people can hide very important things about their lives. Kaliarnta uses the analogy of Alice and Betty. Betty seems a little dismissive online, yet the two still maintain a strong relationship. When they meet each other in person Alice discovers that Betty is physically disabled. Although Cocking/Matthews would say this relationship cannot be a true, strong bond, because Alice did not know the whole truth about Betty’s life. Yet Kaliarnta argues that it is not fair to judge a person based on a physical issue. They formed and maintained a close-knit bond without Alice’s perception of Betty being tainted by the idea of a physical flaw. This is genuine friendship. Kaliarnta published her ideas about online friendships in 2016 and is consequently provides the most modern view about a modern topic. She believes online friendships are feasible.
This article really relates to the class. We learned about the Triadic Closure Property. If two people share a mutual friend on Facebook, they are very inclined to research more into that person’s life. Having three nodes all have a positive edge validates the Triadic Closure Property. The Kaliarnta argues that Facebook and other social media websites allow you to learn about a person very quickly. If you have no mutual friend with this person, they may never pop up on your “newsfeed” and you may never even know they exist. So that connecting friend allows a positive relationship to form between two people. Also if a person finds another person from a mutual friend that they do not like, if the mutual friend does not like them either they can form a relationship off of the share dislike between them. This again solidifies and proves the Triadic Closure Property.