Strong and Weak Ties Within Information Sharing of COVID-19
COVID-19 has impacted the world over the last few years. Its reach and influence can be seen in many aspects of society: economic, cultural, infrastructural, and social. Regarding the social aspect, it is expected that different social groups, distinguished between weak or strong bonds (ties) should share information differently, adapting to the closeness to the group and comfortability. Since strong networks have a closeness that makes them form a bond, it can be inferred that people could feel more comfortable expressing their positive and negative emotions regarding COVID-19. Whereas, in weak-tied networks, individuals might feel less expressive to mask potential judgment or fear.
This paper explores the difference in health information sharing within weak and strong networks. This experiment not only examines the properties behind strong tied networks and weak tied networks, but also analyzes the psychological and emotional factors that accompany each relationship. The information regarding COVID-19 sentiments and network specific ties were collected through surveys and linear regressions were performed to assess the information acquisition of networks. The results found that individuals “were more likely to share COVID-19 information within their strong-tie networks…whereas information acquisition from weak-tie networks was associated to sharing within both strong-tie and weak-tie networks” (Lu et al.)
The research suggests that new and diverse viewpoints are introduced into strong-tied networks when heterogeneity is present in weak-tied networks. The information carried through weak-tied networks travels along into strong networks and furthers the information sharing process. Such directly reminded me of Mark Granovetter’s study on job mobility within social networks, which we discussed in class. Granovetter’s results explained how life changing opportunities, specifically such as landing a new job–or spreading sensitive disease prevention information– usually comes from people we do not know very well, in other words have a weak tie with. Imagine a situation where you learn about a job through an acquaintance. Node A is looking for a job and its friends B, C and D cannot know about more information since they are part of the same social group. If A has a weak link with E, then the link to E differs because the source of information is novel and came from a direction where people have access to new information, such that A’s group doesn’t have access to it. The social circle that A travels in is different from the social circle E travels in. Therefore new information is spread to strong-ties through weak-ties. As previously stated, this concept can be directly tied back to the health information sharing regarding COVID-19. The results of the initial study explain how negative emotions “significantly motivated information sharing within weak-tie networks and information from weak-tie networks circulated more widely [than strong-tied networks]” (Lu et al.)
Acknowledgments: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772628222000206#!