An October 17, 2009, column in The New York Times, titled “Networks Too Big for Their Own Good” questions the “strength” and utility of weak ties in the age of social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Author Jon Picoult writes of the implications of networking in large networks for employers and recruiters seeking qualified candidates for jobs:

 “As the definition of people’s “networks” has expanded to include not just colleagues they’ve known for a decade, but also practically everyone they pass on the street, the quality of those connections has been greatly diluted. What rational conclusions can companies draw from this relationship game?”

 The full article is available here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/jobs/18pre.html?ref=jobs

If you haven’t done so already, this is a reminder to check out the September issue of the American Politics research journal which we previously mentioned in this post.

The  September 2009 theme issue is titled “Social Networks and American Politics.” The issue draws on work presented at the first “Networks in Political Science” conference held at Harvard University in 2008 and co-chaired by David Lazer and James Fowler. In the introductory article, Michael T. Heaney and Scott D. McClurg write:

“…network analysis has expanded during the last decade within the study of American politics, contributing to knowledge about political institutions, behavior, and network theory. Promising directions for future research include the study of power, preference aggregation, information flow and transaction costs, and network dynamics.”

The issue features research on the influence of networks on political institutions and political behavior, the use of game theory and network theory to explain coordination problems, and the role of interdependence and density dependence in political networks.

The table of contents for the theme issue can be found here:

http://apr.sagepub.com/content/vol37/issue5/