I once made friends with a girl because she used a word I had never heard before. I cant remember what the word was, but the girl’s name was Jenny and we subsequently developed a very strong and meaningful friendship that lasted many years.
Youthful arrogance had me thinking that my command of the English language was so strong that it was highly unlikely that I could expand my vocabulary in ordinary everyday conversation.
I now know differently. Working with journalists has humbled me and caused a swift reassessment of my competencies!
When I first heard the word “discombobulated” for the first time, it was spoken by a very high-profile and very high maintenance woman describing her feelings.
“Did you make that up or is it a real word?” I exclaimed incredulously. “Of course it’s a real word,” she said crossly. “You can look it up!” I did. It is. Needless to say, this exchange did not lead to a long- term friendship.
Today’s conversation is not meant to be about unusual words, but about social ties, strong ones and weak ones. The social network theory depicts relationships between individuals as a kind of map, where the nodes in the network are individuals and the links between them are ties.
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Social networks operate on many levels, such as families, communities, organisations and nations, and they play a critical role in determining the way problems are solved, organisations are run, and the degree to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals.
The “strength” of a tie between two individuals is a combination of the amount of time, the emotional intensity, the sharing of intimate information and assistance that exists between them.
Strong ties are the links shared between individuals who invest a lot of time and emotion in their relationships and who interact with each other frequently. Weak ties entail limited investment in time and emotion, and can be described as relationships between acquaintances.
Strong ties have greater motivation to be of assistance and are typically more available; but weak ties provide people with access to information and resources beyond those available in their own social circle. Here’s how it works:
More novel information flows to individuals through weak rather than strong ties. Because our close friends tend to move in the same circles as we do, the information they receive is going to be very similar to what we already know.
Acquaintances on the other hand, know more people that we don’t know and so they receive more information which is new to us. Strong ties are better for action, weak ties for new information.
In my twenties I bumped into a girl I had been to school with, and in the ensuing obligatory catch-up conversation she told me that she only fostered relationships with people she met before she was 21 years old because she couldn’t “be sure of” new contacts.
What a way to live your life! I guess she just didn’t appreciate the value of weak ties.
Individuals with few weak ties will be deprived of information from distant parts of the social system and will be confined to the provincial news and views of their close circle of friends.
The diffusion of information, such as trends or rumours tends to be dampened by strong ties, and thus flows more easily through weak ties.
In marketing or politics, weak ties enable us to reach populations and audiences that are not accessible via strong ties.
The social network theory has been particularly useful in employment and wage studies. Results consistently show both employers and employees citing acquaintances are the main source of reference in finding new jobs or employees.
In the 1990s American social economist James Montgomery demonstrated that weak ties are positively related to higher wages and higher aggregate employment rates.
In the 21st century, the theory of strong and weak ties takes on a new dimension. The Internet has exponentially increased the speed at which we can connect, engage and confide.
Social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter allow us to access a vast array fo weak tiem more quickly and easily than before.
These tools have been attributed with facilitating social and political upheavals such as the so-called “Twitter revolutions” in Moldova, Tunisia and more recently Egypt.
Of course there are some who argue that the use of social networking tools in facilitating political upheaval is being overestimated. Best selling author and New York Times writer, Malcolm Gladwell says, “ The platforms of social media are built around weak ties.
Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by) people you may never have met. Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing your acquaintances, for keeping up with the people you would not otherwise be able to stay in touch with. That’s why you can have a thousand “friends” on Facebook, as you never could in real life.”
“This is in many ways a wonderful thing. There is strength in weak ties, as the sociologist Mark Granovetter has observed. Our acquaintances, not our friends, are our greatest source of new ideas and information. The Internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvellous efficiency . . . But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism.”
He argues that social media gets people to help only where not much is asked of them, where weak ties are useful, adding that where financial or personal risks are required as in social or political activism, it is the strong ties of commitment to common values and goals that cause people to take action.
He goes on to say: “People protested and brought down governments before Facebook was invented. They did it before the Internet came along.” (www.newyorker.com)
With or without Internet, there is value to be gained from both strong and weak ties, and a consciousness of this will help us exploit the social and political opportunities therein.
Thembe Sachikonye writes in her personal capacity. Readers’ comments can be sent to localdrummer@newsday.co.zw. Follow Thembe on www.twitter/localdrummer