Strong and Weak ties in Social Networks
As we talked about strong and weak ties in class, it reminded me of a different course I took, Comms 2450. In this class we talked about how strong and weak ties can give different opportunities. Weak ties can provide you with more information outside your small group of friends like job opportunities, while strong ties can provide you with more support like large favors. This reminded me of how social media is set up. User’s network consists of strong and weak ties which gives users feeds that consist of people they interact with more, strong ties. Although these accounts may not be strong ties in real life, in the user’s social media network they are. With social media, users can connect to anyone in the world and can create a strong, long-lasting friendship. Weak ties are also very important and relevant in social media. Many people on Instagram, Facebook, or X have hundreds of friends/connections and a vast majority of them are weak ties. This allows users to see posts from a diverse group of opinions unlike in person someone might only be around people with the same ideals as them. Social networks online allow political movements to grow exponentially because of weak ties. Strong and weak ties are everywhere and are very important to social networks.
I also wanted to include that I recently talked to one of my friends’ parents who has his own digital network. He apparently has all the contact information of all his friends or people he has met on his computer. He says he has had it since he was 20 although back then it was on paper. This interested me because we learned about the strong triadic closure theorem and I wanted to see if his network held it. Since his network consists of a lot of friends of friends, I think it will hold even though the strong triadic closure doesn’t always pertain to real life. Even though I haven’t been able to confirm my hypothesis, I found it very interesting and want to start my own. Without this class, I would have never thought that a personal social network would have been interesting and I am so happy I took this course.