The strength of weak tiesPresented by Naoki Maejima (Sociology – 3rd)

Referred Paper

Granovetter, M.S. 1973,

"The Strength of Weak Ties"

American Journal of Sociology, vol. 78, no. 6, pp. 1360-1380.

The definition of “Strong Tie”

“the strength of a tie is a (probably linear) combination of the amount of time, the emotional intensity, the intimacy (mutual confiding) and the reciprocal services which characterize the tie.”(Ibid, 1361)

Triad

Forbidden Triad

Why “forbidden”?

Common strong ties to 1will generate new one.

BridgingBridge plays important role in diffusion.

All bridges are weak ties.

Empirical credence

•A research of “hysterical contagion”

•Milgram’s “Small-World” experiment

•A research in a junior high in Michigan

Weak ties in egocentric networks

ego

Strong ties form dense network.

Weak ties form less dense.

Bridging weak ties lead ego to contacts distant from him.

Labor market study

OBJECT: Recent professional, technical, and managerial job changers living in Boston suburb.

QUESTION: how often they saw the contact around the time that he passed on job information to them.

Results

frequency proportion

Often 16.7%

Occasionally 55.6%

Rarely 27.8%N=54

Weak contribute to “sense of community”

“When a man changes jobs, he is not only moving one network of ties to another, but also establishing a link between these.”

“this mobility sets up elaborate structures of bringing weak ties between the more coherent clusters that constitute operative networks in particular locations.”(Ibid.1373)

By the dichotomy of “weak/strong”,we can make the leap from micro to macro view.

Thank you for listening.