Social Networks in relation to the Queen’s Passing
The recent passing of Queen Elizabeth’s has sparked lots of commentary regarding England’s past. The world has reacted in different ways. Many were deeply saddened, such as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, while others were relieved, such as Carnegie Mellon lecturer Uju Anya, which sparked controversy over whether it was the Queen’s fault for supplying Nigeria with arms and ammunition during the Nigerian Biafran war. Others, such as Pakistani President Dr. Arif Alvi, Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Joe Biden, China’s President Xi Jinping, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, have all expressed their condolences for the Queen’s passing.
However, the recent passing of Queen Elizabeth brings attention back to her (England’s) relationships with other foreign powers, which is a social network between the powers of the world. Similar to how networks have strong and weak ties, the powers of the world have strong and weak ties in terms of their relationships with each other, whether they are diplomatic or strong.
Many leaders of foreign powers have expressed their condolences, which reveals how close the relationships are. In this case, I have considered those not mentioned in the article to have released a statement regarding the Queen’s death can be seen as having no relationship with the Queen. From the 28 powers that have been stated to express some sort of sentiment in the article, I have chosen to focus on 6 countries and their relationships, those being: Pakistan, Ukraine, Japan, Australia, China, Japan, and the United States.
When creating the social network graph of the different countries’ relationships with the the Queen (England), I did some more research on the diplomatic relations between each of the 6 countries. I designated green lines to be strong relationships (strong ties), yellow lines to be “okay” relationships (weak ties), and red lines to be poor relationships (for the sake of having a tie between each country in the network). From
As someone who isn’t always caught up in international affairs, drawing the graph made me realize how complex diplomatic relationships are. All the countries in my graph satisfy the Strong Triadic Closure Property, however what is more interesting are the structural and interpersonal connections. In class, we discussed how interpersonal connections are able to get information you and your close circle wouldn’t be able to get, as discussed in class about Mark Granovotter about job opportunities and how they come from acquaintances, not friends. In this case, we can kind of see which countries have access to the same information, and which country each country must pay or ask to get information from.
https://time.com/6211821/queen-elizabeth-ii-death-world-reactions/
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-09-08/queen-elizabeth-ii-world-reaction
https://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/pakistan/pakistan-country-brief#:~:text=Bilateral%20relationship,in%20the%20country%20since%201948.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_the_United_Kingdom
https://www.premiumtimesng.com/opinion/553418-uju-anyas-and-the-vitriol-on-queen-elizabeth-by-festus-adedayo.html
https://www.essence.com/news/politics/diaspora-queen-elizabeth-death/