Search results for " small world"
showing 4 items of 4 documents
Small world theory and the World Wide Web: linking small world properties and website centrality
2016
This qualitative paper aims to point out the incidence of small world characteristics in the World Wide Web. To this end, some theoretical implications of small world theory (SWT) are verified using information from focus groups and in-depth interviews administered to experts and users of the World Wide Web. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether it is possible to apply small world properties to online social networks while pointing out the key variables of website centrality in that context. Building on this, the paper traces possible contributions for better management of the World Wide Web in terms of the professional use of social media to facilitate information or product …
Facebook as a Small World: a topological hypothesis
2011
Facebook is becoming a pervasive entity as its social, cultural and media ramifications grow deep and entrenched in our daily life. Its nature of a complex system of interactions, bearing a strong similarity to networks built through individual choices and systems shaped by evolu- tionary pressure, makes it an interesting target for research. Scale-free Small World networks, recently popularized by Barabasi, are a topological class pertaining to both these domains, whose members have resilience to disruption and short intermediate connections between nodes. In this paper we show that the topological structure of a specific subset of Facebook, gathered using data from a self-report online qu…
THE COMPLEX, YET SMALL WORLD OF GLOBAL MULTINATIONALS – INSIGHTS ON SOME APPARENT PARADOXES
2013
Globalization, as it is today, shapes a complex, networked world – that embeds all the features (both vantages and liabilities) of a complex adaptive system. Being one of the biggest networks that define this world, the system of international business – characterized by diversity, (nondeterministic) interconnectivity and uncertainty – is also characterized by the small-world syndrome. Global multinationals are the best supporting agents in order to dismantle the apparent paradox of the complex, yet small world (and others like it).