11.1: Social Networks
A social network is a social structure made up of individuals, groups, or actors (nodes) and their relations to one another. These ties are dyadic, or in other words, made up of only two individuals or groups. The many didactic relationships of each individual or node come together to build a social network. These relationships are used to study groups of people and the relationships that tie them together. Social networks are used by many different fields of study, not just anthropology. Most commonly, social networks can be seen in the research of sociologists, someone who studies the development organization, and functioning of human society, biologists, economists, and so on.
An example of a social network is the friend wheel (or social network) that can be generated, using a widget on your browser, from your Facebook friends. This shows the connections to different individuals and shows the interconnectivity between and within different sub-groups, such as friends from school and friends from work. When a computer network connects people or organizations, it is a social network. [1]