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A Network Approach To Web 2.0 Social Influence - The Influentials Word of Mouth Effect and The Emmergence of Social Network On Facebook
A Network Approach To Web 2.0 Social Influence - The Influentials Word of Mouth Effect and The Emmergence of Social Network On Facebook
=
2 cij
k(k-1)
: ] I onJ c
ij
E (2a)
where k is the size of N
i
. Based on Watts and Strogatz (1998), the clustering coefficient
of an opinion leaders personal network G, denoted as C
G,
is calculated by averaging
local clustering coefficients of all vertices in G. That is,
C
G
=
1
n
C
n
=1
(2b)
Next, the number of subgraphs in an opinion leaders personal network is used as
an indicator of heterogeneity. The number of subgraphs is computed with a Girvan-
Newman algorithm. The Girvan-Newman algorithm utilizes the measure of edge-
betweenness to detect the sub-structures of a network (Girvan & Newman, 2002,
p.7822). Edge-betweenness is analogous to Freemans (1978) betweenness-centrality of a
vertex. Specifically, edge-betweenness is defined as the number of the shortest paths
between pairs of vertices that run along the edge of interest. Equivalent to the vertex
betweenness, if there is more than one shortest path between a pair of vertices, each path
is given equal weight. The betweenness of edge k in G(V, E) is formalized as
62
B
E
(k) =
Sij(Ek)
Sij
, i, ] I, k E (3)
where S
ij
is the number of shortest paths from i to j, and S
ij
(E
k
) is the number of shortest
paths from i to j that pass through an edge k.
Edge-betweenness is used to find cut-edges that should be removed to break a
network into sub-networks. According to Girvan and Newman (2002), cut-edges must
have high edge-betweenness because if a network contains groups that are only loosely
connected by a few intergroup edges, then all shortest paths between different
communities must go along one of these few edges (Girvan & Newman, 2002, p. 7822).
By removing cut-edges, sub-groups are separated from one another, revealing the
underlying community structure. The Girvan-Newman algorithm is processed by three
steps: (1) calculating edge-betweenness of all vertices; (2) removing the edge of the
highest betweenness; (3) recalculating edge-betweenness of the remaining vertices; and
(4) repeating from (2) until no edge remains (Girvan & Newman, 2002).
Applying this logic to Facebook personal networks, I assume that subgroups
found by the Girvan-Newman algorithm should have been formed in distinctive social
contexts. For example, if an individual is a member of a Chinese student club as well as a
member of the Catholic campus ministry, friends from the Chinese student club must
know one another will friend each other on Facebook, as do friends from the Catholic
ministry. However, only a few friends from the Chinese student club might know anyone
from the Catholic ministry and vice versa. Accordingly, there are only a few ties bridging
the two groups. The more sub-groups are identified by removing such bridging ties
within the personal network, the more the ego is likely to have diversified social
relationships from different backgrounds.
63
5.4. Results
Descriptive Analysis and Correlation Test. Among 128 opinion leaders, 55.8
percent of respondents were females (N = 72) and 43.4 percent were males (N = 56). (SD
= 6.09). Opinion leaders have attended the university for 2.02 years on average (SD
= .93). The average number of invitees was 59.63, although the variability was large (SD
= 56.10). Among them, 23.51 friends were mobilized for the advocacy group per person
(SD = 15.33). To make the outcome variable normally distributed, the number of
mobilized invitees was transformed into a 7-point scale, resulting in a mean score of 2.81
(SD = 1.49). In terms of self-designated opinion leadership, opinion leaders scored 7.05
out of 10 on average (SD = 2.17) for the personality strength and11.30 out of 16 on
average (SD = 2.31) for KS opinion leadership. The average score for Facebook
gregariousness was 4.10 out of 7 (SD = 1.10) and for social activity 3.67 (SD = 1.18).
Correlation analysis revealed that larger friendship networks are correlated with
having been in school longer (r = .20, p < .05), being higher in gregariousness (r = .19, p
< .05), and more active in social activity participation (r = .28, p < .01). Personality trait
showed significant correlation with both opinion leadership measures, KS index-based
measure (r = .29, p < .01) and observation-based measure (r = .19, p < .05). However,
there was no correlation revealed between the two opinion leadership measures (r = .09, p
= n.s.). Accordingly, Hypothesis 1 is not supported. Descriptive statistics and zero-order
correlation among these variables are found in Table 6.
64
Table 6. Means, Standard Deviations and Correlations of Variables
(N = 128).
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
1 SEX -
2 School YR -0.11 -
3 Gregarious 0.14 -0.10 -
4 Social Activity 0.05 -0.10 0.03 -
5
UB Friends
0.13 .20
*
.19
*
.28
**
-
6
Weimann
Scale
0.09 0.00 0.17 -0.04 0.05 -
7
KS Scale
-0.12 0.09 0.11 0.01 0.06 .29
**
-
8
Recruited
Friends
0.09 0.08 .25
**
.38
***
.49
***
.19
*
0.09 -
Mean
0.56 2.02 4.10 3.68 59.63 7.05 11.30 2.81
(SD)
(0.50) (0.93) (1.10) (1.18) (56.10) (2.17) (2.31) (1.49)
Note: *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
Opinion Leadership and Social Attributes. To test Hypotheses 2, 3, and 4,
hierarchical regression analyses were performed with two criterion variables, one of
which is the KS index based self-designated opinion leadership and the other
observation-based opinion leadership measured by counting the number of mobilized
friends. In both analyses, the control variables including gender and school year were
entered into the first block. The size of total UB friends was included in the second block.
All the missing variables were excluded list-wise.
The multiple regression analysis indicated that the overall model with self-
designated opinion leadership as a dependent variable was marginally non-significant, F
(6, 107) = 2.109, p = .06, only accounting for small variances, adjusted R
2
= .06. The
65
only significant predictor of self-designated opinion leadership was the PS index, another
self-perception based variable ( = .31, p < .001). Accordingly, Hypothesis 2a was
supported, while 3a, 4a, and 5a were not supported.
Table 7. Multiple Regression Analysis for Predicting Self-Perceived Opinion Leadership
Measured by King and Summers Index (N = 114).
B SE t
p
First block
Gender -.33 .43 -.08 -.79 .432
School year .09 .18 .05 .50 .624
F (2, 111) = .48, p = .62, R
2
= .09, adjusted R
2
= .09
Second block
Gender -.37 .43 -.08 -.86 .392
School year .06 .18 .03 .34 .737
UB friends .00 .00 .06 .64 .523
F
change
(1, 110) = .41, p = .52, R
2
change
< .01
Third Block
Gender -.51 .41 -.11 -1.23 .221
School year .04 .17 .02 .22 .826
UB friends .00 .00 .07 .72 .475
Weimann** .32 .10 .31 3.36 .001
F
change
(1, 109) = 11.29, p < .01, R
2
change
= .09
Fourth Block
Gender -.52 .42 -.12 -1.24 .218
School year .05 .18 .03 .28 .777
UB friends .00 .00 .06 .56 .579
Weimann** .32 .10 .31 3.32 .001
Gregarious .02 .07 .02 .22 .824
Social Activity .01 .05 .02 .25 .807
F
change
(2, 107) = 0.05, p = .95, R
2
change
< .01
The overall model: F (6, 107) = 2.109, p = 0.06, adjusted R
2
= .06.
Note: **p < .01; Missing cases were excluded list-wise.
66
On the other hand, when predictors were regressed against the observed opinion
leadership as a dependent variable, the model showed a good model fit with much higher
accounted variances: F (6, 103) = 8.49, p < 0.001, adjusted R
2
= .29.
When the control variables were entered into the first block, neither gender ( =
.09, n.s.), nor school year ( = .06, n.s.) were statistically significant. Unsurprisingly, the
number of friends on Facebook was positively associated with the number of recruited
friends, = .48, p < .001, accounting for 22.4 percent of variance change.
When the personality trait variable was included in the third block, the variables
uniquely explained 4 percent of the variance in the observed opinion leadership
represented by the number of recruited friends, p < .05. In other words, Weimanns PS
score was a significant predictor of the observed outcome of opinion leadership, = .19,
p < .05, indicating that the higher a person was scored on the Personality Strength index,
the more friends the person could influence for the advocacy behavior. Therefore,
Hypothesis 2b was supported.
When two variables of Facebook social attributes were put into the model,
another 7 percent of variance was uniquely explained. Among the two social attributes,
gregariousness and social activity, only social activity showed a significant association
with observed leadership, supporting only Hypothesis 5b: For gregariousness, = .16, p
= .09; for social activity, = .23, p < .01. Among the three hypothesized predictors,
Facebook social activity was the strongest predictor of the opinion leaders influence on
their friends advocacy behavior. Table 8 summarizes the results of regression model of
observed opinion leadership.
67
Table 8. Multiple Regression Analysis for Predicting Observed Opinion Leadership
Measured by Behavioral Influence Outcome (N = 114).
B SE t p
First block
Gender .27 .29 .09 .94 .349
School year .08 .12 .06 .66 .511
F (2, 107) = .59, p = .55, R
2
= .01, adjusted R
2
< .01
Second block
Gender .10 .26 .03 .38 .702
School year -.05 .11 -.04 -.49 .627
UB friends .01 .00 .48 5.45 .000
F
change
(1, 106) = 29.74, p < .001, R
2
change
= .22
Third Block
Gender .04 .25 .01 .18 .864
School year -.06 .11 -.05 -.57 .573
UB friends*** .01 .00 .48 5.58 .000
Weimann** .13 .06 .19 2.28 .025
F
change
(1, 105) = 5.20, p < .05, R
2
change
= .04
Fourth Block
Gender -.01 .25 -.00 - .04 .968
School year .01 .11 .00 .04 .965
UB friends*** .01 .00 .39 4.40 .000
Weimann** .13 .06 .19 2.37 .019
Gregarious .07 .04 .15 1.74 .085
Social Activity** .07 .03 .23 2.76 .007
F
change
(2, 103) = 5.15, p < .01, R
2
change
< .07
The overall model: F (6, 103) = 8.49, p < 0.001, adjusted R
2
= .29.
Note: *p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001; Missing cases were excluded list-wise.
Personal Network Heterogeneity and Opinion Leadership. Network-related
variables were calculated with sociometric data of 72 opinion leaders. To do so, I used
the software ORA 2.0 developed by Carley (2009). The mean density for 73 personal
networks was 0.22 (SD = 0.13) and had a clustering coefficient of 0.53 (SD = 0.17). On
average, each personal network had 5.57 subgroups (SD = 3.61). Hierarchical regression
68
modeling was not conducted due to small sample size. Instead, correlation tests were
conducted to explore research questions 1a and 1b.
The correlations between network variables and opinion leadership measures are
presented in Table 9. First, I tested the bivariate correlations. The results revealed that the
observed opinion leadership was negatively correlated with density (r = - .40, p < .01)
and positively correlated with the Girvan-Newman subgroup (r = .35, p < .01).
On the other hand, as seen in the table, observed opinion leadership was highly
correlated with personal network size. Considering the impact of the network size, I
additionally tested partial correlations with network size controlled. The pattern revealed
similar results, except for the relationship between the Girvan-Newman subgroup and
observed leadership whose significance was weeded out. Given that density is the
indicator of network cohesiveness and the Girvan-Newman subgroup measures network
heterogeneity, the results find positive correlations of network heterogeneity with
observed leadership and negative association with the cohesive personal network. On the
other hand, the clustering coefficient seems not an appropriate measure to operationalize
Facebook cosmopoliteness.
Meanwhile, Research Question 1b explores the relationship between self-
perceived opinion leadership and Facebook cosmopoliteness. The results showed that any
network-based measurement of cosmopoliteness did not show significant correlation with
the KS score.
69
Table 9. Correlations between Network Variables and Opinion Leadership (N = 72).
1 2 3 4 5
Network
Size
1 KS_partial -
0.066
KS_bivariate -
2 Observed_partial -.06 -
0.64***
Observed_bivariate .06 -
3 Density_partial .1 -.21* -
-0.36**
Density_bivariate .04 -.40** -
4 Clustering_partial .16 -.11 .68*** -
-0.1
Clustering_bivariate .15 -.15 .67*** -
5 GN_partial .09 .11 -.47** -.33** -
0.36**
GN_bivariate .13 .35** -.54*** -.35** -
Mean 11.09 2.89 .21 .53 5.57
(SD) 2.24 1.51 .13 .17 3.61
Note: *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001; KS = King and Summers scale, Observed =
observed opinion leadership based on the recruited friends, GN = number of sub-
groups created through Girvan-Newman algorithm
5.5. Conclusion and Discussions
Strategic communication planners have attempted to identify a subset of the
population who can influence peoples attitudes, opinions, and behaviors. Studies have
adopted four approaches sociometric, self-designated, informant rating and
observation to indentify opinion leaders and their role in the diffusion process of
innovation. Identifying opinion leaders and having them as early adopters is an important
task for marketers and campaigners to accelerate the diffusion process. In the context of
Web 2.0 in which the interpersonal visibility is greater than offline or traditional CMC,
70
personal influence emerges as a even more crucial factor to expedite word-of-mouth
communication.
The current chapter conducted a cyber-field experiment by having subjects play
opinion leaders and by observing how they actually influenced their Facebook friends
behaviors. The study employed two techniques, self-designated and observation, to
represent the degree of each players opinion leadership. By comparing the results from
the two techniques, I attempted to find a more valid indicator for the Facebook
influentials. Interestingly, the study found no correlation between the two methods.
Furthermore, the measurement of self-designated opinion leadership based on the KS
scale was not predicted by Facebook social characteristics, although it was significantly
associated with personality strength. Observation-based opinion leadership, on the other
hand, showed positive association with individuals Facebook social activities and
cosmopoliteness as well as personality characteristics.
The incongruence between the two methods has several implications for future
online opinion leadership studies. First, it revisits the issue of false consensus (Rice &
Aydin, 1991), that is, the over-estimation of ones ability to exert influence on others
opinion or behavior. It is important to note that self-designation is based on self-
perception, not on the perspective of the influenced. Perceiving oneself as being
influential may not necessarily be linked to the actual ability to influence, at least in the
Facebook context. Although the self-designated technique might be a handy approach to
identify the influentials preliminarily thanks to its convenience, a researcher should be
aware that those scored high in self-designation will not always turn out to have many
followers in actual performance.
71
Meanwhile, another possibility for the discrepant results is attributed to the
particular experimental context. The project intended to mobilize college students to
create a cyber-advocacy network. Because joining the network does not require much
commitment or cost, potential adopters might not engage in in-depth cognitive processing
for a cost-benefit assessment whether to do it or not (e.g. Clicking join the group button
on Facebook requires definitely less cost than, say, purchasing an iPod). Accordingly,
potential adopters might not be very dependent on informational influence. Given that the
KS scale measures a persons expertise or skill on a certain issue or object, it represents
opinion leadership based on the degree of informational influence. From this perspective,
it is not surprising that self-designated opinion leadership was not a valid indicator of the
influentials.
Cao, Knotts, Xu, and Chau (2009) discuss that there are two non-mutually
exclusive types of influentials: influencer and connector. An influencer exerts
informational influence through his or her knowledge and expertise. A connector has
many social connections and is thus capable of spreading a message to wider audiences.
The result of this project suggests that the influentials in this project turned out to be
more like connectors than influencers. This conclusion is evident in that the actual
capacity of changing others behavior was positively predicted by a persons social
attributes reflected by his or her social networking practice on Facebook. Although not
hypothesized, Facebook personal network size, the simplest indicator how actively a
person engages in social networking with others, greatly contributed to the mobilization
outcome. In addition, the positive associations of the extent of group activities in which a
person participates on Facebook and the heterogeneity of the ego-network structure with
72
the persons recruitment capacity imply that social connectors are probably a more
important source of influence than knowledge-based influencers.
This result is tentative, however, given that the experimental design provoked a
non-profit and relatively simplistic behavior. To confirm whether the discrepancy
between self-designated and observed opinion leadership is attributed to the problem of
false consensus, to the experimental design, or to the particularity of the Web 2.0 context,
future research might be needed to apply the methods to other situations in which more
dynamic cognitive processing is required in adoption decision-making.
Another contribution of this chapter is that it introduces the network-based
measurement of cosmopoliteness. A physical mobility-based conceptualization of
cosmopoliteness is not well-suited in the online context where heterogeneous social
interactions from different cultural backgrounds are possible without necessarily moving
around. Taking advantage of the visibility of online social networks (Xu, Zhang, Xue, &
Yeo, 2008), I borrowed the Facebook network structure properties as parameters to
measure the degree of individuals cosmopoliteness. The rationale to use network
measures is based on the assumption that the cosmopolite person will maintain a more
heterogeneous personal network, which is structurally less dense and includes more sub-
groups. The result of a positive correlation of network heterogeneity with the observed
opinion leadership suggests that the network-based understanding of cosmopoliteness can
be a justifiable approach to measure one dimension of social characteristics of the
influentials. The structural approach to social characteristics, however, is a novel
approach in opinion leadership literature. Additional research in different contexts needs
73
to be added to confirm that a network-based measurement is a proper approach to
characterize social aspects of online opinion leaders.
74
VI. WORD-OF-MOUTH ON FACEBOOK: STRUCTURAL APPROACH
6.1. Structural Approach to WOM Effect on Social Organizing on Facebook
6.1.1. WOM Communication in Facebook
The Word-of-Mouth (WOM) communication strategy, which refers to the use of
informal interpersonal communication channels to promote products, brands or services
(Brooks, 1957), has been regarded as the most effective alternative to the traditional
forms of strategic communication (Trusov, Bucklin, & Pauwels, 2009). Traditionally,
WOM research relies on two approaches: self-reports on surveys, stemming from the
original research on interpersonal influence by Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955), and adoption
studies inspired by Coleman and his colleagues (1966) pioneering diffusion research.
Unfortunately, because neither approach could provide straightforward evidence of
WOM effectiveness, researchers could only infer the presence of WOM effects from the
data (Trusov et al., 2009).
During the past decades, digitally connected social networks through which
preexisting as well as newly formed relationships are maintained, enhanced, and
extended (Haythornthwaite, 2002; Wellman, Boase, & Chen, 2002) have been
particularly spotlighted as the amplifier of WOM processes with lower costs and fast
diffusion. Along with the buzz for the prospect of electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM),
scholars have endeavored to supplement the scant evidence of WOM effects in the
traditional offline context by taking advantage of easily accessible online archives of
referral histories. Examples include usenet posts (e.g. Godes & Mazline, 2004), online
product reviews (e.g. Chevalier & Mayzlin, 2006; Liu, 2006; Mishne & Glance, 2006)
75
and pass-along emailing (Norman & Russel, 2006; Phelps et al., 2005). Even those e-
WOM studies, however, are limited for two main reasons. (1) Except only a few cases of
e-WOM research (e.g. De Bruyn & Lilien, 2008; Trusov et al., 2009), literature are
predominantly predisposed to message senders (or transmitters) rather than the effect of
WOM on message recipients. (2) Discussions revolve exclusively for the sake of for-
profit marketing, while somewhat disregarding the implications of e-WOM on less
commercially driven areas such as social marketing, cause-related campaigns, or non-
profit advocacy.
In recent years, social networking sites, notably Facebook, have emerged as one
of the most successful venues for e-WOM. The so-called social context ad rises as a
novel advertising strategy, lending Facebook the selling power equivalent to major search
engines such as Google and Yahoo!, the forerunners of interactive advertising (Steel &
Fowler, July 7, 2010). Facebooks social context advertising garners the spotlight from
marketers thanks to the full-fledged use of online connectedness for a viral effect.
Social context advertising is performed based on the software that Facebook
developers call social plug-ins, including Like Buttons, Recommendations plug-in,
Login Button, Comments, Activity Feed, Like Box, Friendpile plug-in, and
Live Stream (for description of each plug-in, see
http://developers.facebook.com/plugins). Once embedded in advertisers websites, social
plug-ins allow visitors to share their attitudes, thoughts or behaviors about products or
activities advertised on the websites with other friends on Facebook. The impact that the
rise of social context advertising has on the interactive advertising market is not trivial.
Fowler and Efrati (August 2, 2010) report that the implementation of social plug-ins
76
results in one- to five-fold increase in referral traffic from Facebook (p. B1) and
visitors from Facebook stay on advertisers websites for 20 percent more time than
visitors from search engines.
Not just profit-oriented markets that can benefit from Facebook-like WOM
communication; non-commercial sectors benefit from e-WOM as well. Examples are
abundant. Thackeray, Neiger, Hanson, and McKenzie (2008) discuss the advantage of
using social networking sites or micro-blogging services to enhance personal
recommendations-based health promotions. On Facebook, for example, a Facebook page
of the American Public Health Association (APHA) is run solely for recruiting new
members to APHA and sharing information (Thackeray et al., 2008). Regarding the
impact on political campaigns, Williams and Gulati (2007) empirically examined the
effect of using Facebook social networks on political candidates actual voting shares.
Particularly, the implemented software Election Pulse on Facebook not only creates
candidates profiles but also helps supporters become easily informed about their
candidates updates, share their candidate preferences (who they like) with other less
political-minded friends, and connect themselves with other supporters. Williams and
Gulatis 2007 results showed that successful utilization of Facebook contributed to
candidates winning a higher percentage of vote shares. Additional examples include
Support the Campaign for Cancer Research which has over 3 million members and has
raised nearly $60,000, Stop Global Warming with 1.7 million members and $21,000 of
fundraising, and the successful activism group "One Million Voices against the FARC
that drove 10 million protesters on the street world-wide. These examples suggest that
Facebook social networks prevalently play a role in social organizing and fundraising and
77
contribute the spread of social consciousness and promote civic engagement, pro-social
behaviors and community participation (Maderazo, 2008; Neumayer & Raffl, 2008).
In sum, WOM communication on Facebook potentially benefits social marketers,
non-profit organizers and cause advocates as well as commercial marketers. E-WOM
research can take advantage of observable social network structures on Facebook to find
empirical evidence of WOM effects on message recipients attitude or behavior changes.
6.1.2. Facebook WOM as Social Influence Process: Structural Approach
WOM communication can be seen as a process of social influence. Various social
psychological motives are offered to explain how social influence occurs. One motivation
is the desire to seek informational accuracy: People try to perceive the state of reality
correctly to react properly to social situations they encounter (Cialdini & Goldstein,
2004). When there is uncertainty regarding perception, people compare their own
opinions, attitudes or beliefs to those that are held by others with whom they interact. As
a part of the continuous effort to reduce uncertainty, social comparisons induce
informational influence from reference groups (Festinger, 1954).
Second, social influence becomes normative when others attitudes or behaviors
are a role model that is desirable for an individual to conform. Normative influence
occurs when people are motivated to be affiliated with the reference group or to maintain
a positive self-concept within the group (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004). If an individual
perceives that a certain belief or behavior is shared among those with whom the
individual wants to maintain meaningful relationships, the individual would be likely to
commit him or herself to the belief or behavior to be affiliated with the group of people
or to avoid social sanctions as the result of deviation. By expressing desirable opinions or
78
attitudes, the individual will also gain social rewards such as popularity, affinity or a
reputation that increases his or her self-esteem and positive self-image (Visser & Mirabile,
2004).
Aligning with social influence literature in other topical areas (Rice, 1999;
Iyengar, Ban den Boulte, & Valente, 2010), the WOM process reveals two sources of
social influence: individual influence and structural influence. Individual factors refer to
variables such as personal expertise, skill, personality and psychological traits. Much of
the opinion leadership literature is exemplary in underscoring the contribution of such
individual traits on the information givers motivation and influence on others decision-
making. In this sense, the previous chapter can be considered as testing the individual
factor underlying the WOM communication.
On the other hand, social structural influence on WOM has been relatively less
studied. As Contractor, Seibold, and Hellor (1996) argue, structures have no reality
independent of the interactions they constitute and in which they are constituted (p. 458).
In other words, a meticulous investigation of structural factors requires a researcher to
know where to locate a WOM participants social position in relation with other
interactants. Given that the task to identify the social structural position of each
individual is hardly easy, a paucity of literature focusing on structural influence is not
surprising.
Nonetheless, structural factors are equivalently important to individual factors in
that our attitudes or behaviors cannot be but socially constructed (Fulk, 1993). The effect
of WOM communication also indebts itself to the message recipients socially
constructed perception toward the advocated product or service. In this sense, this
79
chapter can contribute to the progress of the WOM literature by exploring structural
influence on the WOM processes occurring through Facebook informal social networks.
6.1.3. Theories of Structural Social Influence
In organizational theory, Salanciks and Pfefffers (1978) social information
processing model (SIP) explains how an individuals perception, attitude and behaviors
are influenced not just by objective attributes of the task and his or her personal traits but
also by the opinions, beliefs, and behaviors of salient others (Rice & Aydin, 1991,
p.220). Based on Festingers social comparison theory (1954), SIP proposes that
individuals are adaptive agents to their social contexts in which social information is
produced. Several sub-processes are stated to explain how social information affects
individuals attitude or behavior towards organizational tasks to which they are assigned
(Salancik and Pfefffer, 1978).
First, social information can be direct statements uttered by other organizational
members. When an individual is exposed to the other members overt evaluation about a
certain dimension of the job, the exposure to such social information will put the
individual in the situation in which he should align himself with the others by verbally
agreeing with the statement. According to Salancik and Pfeffer (1978), the verbal
agreement may eventually convince the individual himself (p. 229).
Second, even though there are not direct statements articulated by others, the
repeated observation of others attitudes or behaviors can make a person perceive a
certain aspect of environment more prominently than before. The aspect of the
environment that the person has not been previously cognizant is recognized through the
repeated infusion of social information produced through social interactions. Not only
80
does this information help the individual perceive certain aspects of the environment,
social information also makes him or her learn how to interpret the situation through
value-laden (positive and negative) evaluations. If a negative interpretation is assigned to
the issue, the individual finally learns what needs, values or requirements would make the
job environment better.
While the direct sub-process of social information produced through verbal
utterances is analogous to the solicitation effect on compliance behaviors, the indirect
sub-process of the repeated infusion of social information resonates with the network
exposure effects found in the threshold model of diffusion (Valente, 1995) and collective
behaviors (Granovetter, 1978). That is, the point to which the infusion of social
information eventually triggers the attitudinal or behavioral change can be understood as
a persons threshold, which refers to the extent the person is exposed to others attitudes
or behaviors within his or her personal networks enough to be influenced by it
(Granovetter, 1978). Valentes network model of diffusion (1995) conceptualizes social
influence from salient others behaviors as personal network exposure (PNE) (p. 43).
Figure 6 delineates how PNE is associated with the proportion of adopters among the
individuals with whom the individual interacts.
81
Figure 6. An Example of Personal Network Exposure to Social Information
(a) social information about no one;
PNE = 0
(b) social information about one
person; PNE = 20%
(c) social information about three; PNE
= 60%
(d) social information about four; PNE
= 80%
(If the actor follow salient others
behavior at this time, the actors
network threshold is 80%)
Note. Black dotted people are the ones of whom the actor is aware as an adopter of the
attitude or behavior of interest.
Because an individuals threshold is independent of PNE, equivalent exposure
rate does not lead to a homogeneous behavioral outcome (Valente, 1995; 2005): For
individuals with low threshold levels, even a small magnitude of social information could
trigger social influence. On the other hand, others may be resistant to social influence
even with much greater degree of PNE.
82
One important issue arising with SIP theory is how to identify socially relevant
others who serve to influence individuals (Shaw, 1980, p. 45). Meyer (1994) and Rice
(1994) point out that the majority of SIP studies fail to specify who the socially relevant
others should be. According to Rice and Aydin (1991):
[Most] studies rely on a generalized other, where the other does not refer to
specified, named individuals in the local social context but to a general category,
such as "coworker" or "best friends." The reliance on such generalized others
makes it difficult to specify the exact source and mechanisms of the social
information process. The use of generalized others also assumes that the
respondent can accurately estimate other's attitudes or behaviors. However, Rice
and Mitchell (1973) found that there was no significant correlation between
subjects' ratings and the ratings of the subject's coworkers of the extent of their
collaboration or their social interaction (p. 221).
To overcome the operationalization problem, it is advantageous to incorporate a
network analytic approach to the social information processing model. As Pollock,
Whitbred, and Contractor (2000) note, adopting network analysis to social influence
studies can help overcome this operationalization problem. For example, Schmitz and
Fulk (1991) adopted an ego-network method, in which a subject is termed ego and a few
frequent communicators selected by each ego are termed alters. Schmitz and Fulk (1991)
quantified the degree of social information for each ego by averaging alters actual
evaluations about a product. Even with this specified technique, however, their approach
does not contain the full information about socially relevant others because alters were
arbitrarily chosen from within a fixed number of friends (six in Schmitz and Fulks study).
Rice and Aydin (1991) pointed out this limitation and introduced more rigorously
network-based measures of social proximity, emphasizing the importance of looking at
the multilevel structural context from dyadic relational strength to network positions and
to spatial proximity. Network analysis of social proximity was also used in predicting the
83
effect of social influence on employee turnover behaviors (Feeley & Barnett, 1997;
Feeley, Hwang, & Barnett, 2008).
The network structural effect on individuals susceptibility to social pressure to
conform has been theorized as social contagion process (Burt, 1987; Burt & Janicik, 1995;
Hartman & Johnson, 1989). Social influence psychologists distinguish the contagion
process from social facilitation or compliance process, defining contagion as an event in
which a recipients behavior has changed to become more like that of the actor or
imitator. This change has occurred in a social interaction in which the actor has not
intentionally communicated intent to evoke such a change (Polansky, Lippit, & Redl,
1950, p. 322).
Social contagion theory has been applied predominantly in an organizational
context, given the relative easiness of explicating positional structure within definite
organizational boundaries. Social contagion theory aligns with SIP in that it also argues
that organizational behavior does not arise free from social structure. Meyer (1994)
highlights the similarity of the two and proposes the incorporation of social contagion
measures into the SIP model. He specifies that contagion occurs through three
mechanisms: simple direct contact, cohesion or group affiliation and structural
equivalence mechanism (1994). Figure 7 describes how the three mechanisms are
structurally different.
84
Figure 7. Simple Representation of Three Social Contagion Mechanisms
2
Simple direct contact is the most parsimonious description of the SIP process: The
interpersonal interaction will increase the perceptual or behavioral similarities among the
social contacts. Accordingly, frequency of contacts is regarded as important; repeated or
multiple direct contacts will increase social pressure to conform. On the other hand, the
simple direct contact mechanism is simplistic in that (a) it only assumes nothing more
about the relationship with comparison others than that they interact directly with one
another and (b) it only implies an inherently dyadic perspective rather than triadic or
higher-order relational structure (Meyer, 1994, p. 1021).
The second mechanism is cohesion (Burt, 1987; Marsden & Friedkin, 1993;
Meyer, 1994). Cohesion is conceptualized as the influence occurring through frequent
and empathetic communication that increases interpersonal attachment (Hartman &
Johnson, 1989, p. 524). Interpersonal attachment triggers the attitudinal, belief or
behavioral congruence among the actors. Cohesion can be measured in different ways:
2
From Social information processing and social networks: A test of social influence
mechanisms, by G. W. Meyer, 1994, Human Relations, 47(9), p.1024, Copyright 1994
by The Tavistock Institute. Adapted with permission of the author.
85
one, measuring tie strengths or communication frequency on a dyadic level; two, a
psychological assessment about over-socialization toward a designated group; and three,
structural analysis of cohesive subgroups (Wasserman & Faust, 1994, p.249).
Structural social influence highlights the third approach. When the third approach is
adopted, one can reveal unique structural properties of a network and an individual: At
the network level, the cohesive network reveals integrated connections among the
members; on an individual level, an individuals embeddedness within the network can
be measured and used as a predictor of his or her social behavior (Moody & White, 2003).
Although three methods show different operationalizations, they are closely
related to one another. Specifically, when two actors are strongly tied, they are likely to
share mutual friends, forming higher-order interconnections together (Granovetter, 1973;
Simmel, 1954). According to Coleman (1989; 1990) and Granovetter (1985), members
embedded in such a dense network are likely to perceive a strong sense of emotional
attachment to the group and undergo an enhanced socialization process by sharing social
support and by building trust in the group. At the same time, strong group affiliation also
increases informal surveillance, privacy invasion, and a sense of obligation to group and
social pressure toward conformity, reducing autonomous behaviors. In other words, the
cohesion effect on social influence emerges under the mechanism of group affiliation.
Unlike direct contact or the cohesion mechanism, the structural equivalence
mechanism does not assert that direct social contact among members has to be a
prerequisite for social influence to occur. Instead, it emphasizes that the positional
similarity between actors results in attitudinal or behavioral similarity, even in the
absence of direct interaction with each other. The extent of positional similarity depends
86
on the identical relational patterns through which actors receive similar information. Burt
(1987) argues that actors who are in the same position in a social system are likely to be
in a competing relationship in which actors will monitor each other through a third party,
and thus are aware of each others attitude or behavior. The structural equivalence
mechanism provides an alternative perspective to interaction-based mechanisms,
suggesting that the similarity in relational pattern can determine the socialization process
as well as the existence of direct contacts (Burt, 1987).
Conventional understanding is that, by cohesion, contagion occurs between
individuals in the same primary group, and by structural equivalence, contagion occurs
between competitors (Burt & Janicik, 1995). Although cohesion and structural
equivalence are conceptually independent mechanisms (Marsden & Friedkin, 1993), they
are not in opposition to each other. While cohesion and structural equivalence are often
proposed as competing theoretical explanations (e.g. Hartman & Johnston, 1989; Meyer,
1994), real social networks often reveal that they are not always contrasting to each other.
As seen in Figure 8, Figures A and B exemplify situations where cohesion and
structure equivalence compete with each other: In A, the cohesion effect is reduced
because of unequal positional structure; in B, contagion occurs not through direct
interaction with each other but through structural equivalence in which the third party
provides both actors with the same information. As presented in Figure C, however,
certain social structures lead to identical understanding of both concepts. Figure C
resonates with Simmel (1954) and Granovetter (1973) that interpersonal attachment
emerges from integrated social structures: The network of cohesive triadic relationships
creates the complete network as seen in Figure C. In a complete network, actors not only
87
directly communicate to one another but also are positioned in a way that they are
structurally equivalent because their relational patterns are identical. In this sense, the
network in Figure C suggests that structural measures of cohesion be regarded as a
special case of structural equivalence, making identical predictions of contagion
outcomes between the two mechanisms.
Figure 8. Social Structures of Structural Equivalence and Cohesion
3
3
From Social contagion and innovation: Cohesion versus structural equivalence, by R.
S. Burt, 1987, The American journal of Sociology, 92(6), p.1292. Copyright 1987 by The
University of Chicago. Adapted with permission of the author.
88
6.1.4. Typology of Structural Influence Mechanisms for Facebook WOM: Personal
recommendation, social contagion, and embeddedness
The SIP and social contagion theories were developed in a formal organizational
context. The theories, however, are also applicable to Facebooks WOM-based social
organizing phenomena. Many social organizing practices on Facebook intend to achieve
instrumental goals such as mobilizing collective action, promoting advocacy, raising
donations, or social problem-solving. The formation and development of such groups can
be understood as an organizational behavior composed of micro-level decision-making
enacted by group members.
In the initial stage of group formation, potential members may encounter an
uncertainty to some extent in deciding whether to join the group or not. Various questions
may arise, such as whether the advocated issue is a problem worthy of their own effort, to
what extent the organizational effectiveness is expected, whether their role as a group
member is well-defined, and in what way the group activity will contribute to real life. To
reduce uncertainties, they will observe their Facebook friends behaviors. If they find that
their friends react to the group favorably, they are likely to perceive that the issue
promoted by the group is important enough to be assessed. Furthermore, if there are more
friends who show positive attitudes or behavior toward the group, the person will be
more convinced about the value of organizational action and are likely to become a
member.
Based on the SIP and social contagion theories discussed above, I propose a
typology of structural mechanisms underlying how WOM communication leads to the
group formation in Facebook. The first mechanism is the direct personal
89
recommendation effect. This mechanism is analogous to the sub-process with direct
statements uttered by other organizational members in the SIP model or simple direct
contact mechanism explained by Meyer (1994). This mechanism is the most
straightforward influence of WOM communication. Simply speaking, the more
recommendations a person receives, the more social pressure he or she will perceive and
will thus be likely to comply with the recommendation. Based on the first mechanism,
H1: The more Facebook friends who make a personal recommendation about the
Facebook group to an individual, the stronger social influence the individual will
experience such that the individual will be more likely to comply with the
recommendation.
The second mechanism is the contagion effect. Individuals are exposed to social
information not only by receiving direct recommendations, but also by roaming
interpersonal networks on Facebook. Facebook interpersonal networks are the major
venue for Facebook WOM communication in that it facilitates friends behavioral or
attitudinal updates. In other words, Facebook social networks enable users to observe and
learn about others thoughts and activities through mundane social contacts, which should
produce more or fewer contagion effects. Likewise, similar to the first mechanism, the
second mechanism is also based on the influence occurring from direct social interaction.
It is differentiated, however, from the direct contact mechanism in that the influence from
this mechanism is unintentional and based on learning or imitation rather than
compliance with recommendations.
Wheeler (1966) states that the probability of contagion occurrence should increase
as psychological barriers, such as perceived cost, uncertainty toward the usefulness,
90
boredom, or lame motivation, get low. For example, a lower degree of prohibition of an
action is more likely to lead to a persons deviation when he or she is exposed to others
deviation than a stricter degree of prohibition. The inherent conflicts whether to perform
online activity is usually set at a lower level than that of offline actions, because adoption
of a certain online activity tends not to demand substantial effort, cost and commitment,
or any harm to others.
Decision-making regarding online behaviors is generally based on lower
psychological barriers than offline. Likewise, the exposure to others behavior on
Facebook could easily resolve an actors internal conflict and motivate a potential actor
to go along with the advocated behavior. Based on the social contagion mechanism,
H2. Higher Facebook network exposure to the behavior will lead to a greater
social contagion effect such that an individual with high exposure to others involving in
the advocated Facebook group activity will be more likely to get involved in the group.
Meanwhile, there are two distinctions between Facebook groups and conventional
formal organizations that should be considered prior to explicating the third mechanism
of Facebook WOM. First, the organizational or group behaviors in Facebook are initiated
and developed through loosely connected informal friendship networks that present the
absence or minimal number of hierarchical superior-subordinate relationships.
Hierarchical authority has been an important factor that causes compliance and
conformity behaviors (Marsden & Friedkin, 1993). On Facebook, however, the authority
effect may be considered as a less explicit source of influence. Even if the boss of a
company is on a Facebook personal network, his authority can be exerted only implicitly
at best rather than directly affecting the activities emerging on Facebook, because the
91
roles of boss and subordinate in the workplace is not expected on Facebook, the informal
social space, anymore. Therefore, vertical relationships are less visible on Facebook in
comparison with the formal organizational context.
Second, conventional organizational behaviors assume intra- or inter-
organizational competitions. Accordingly, the network advantage that boosts
entrepreneurship is often emphasized in the social contagion process. Particularly, Burt
(1987) argues that actors who are in structurally equivalent positions tend to get access to
similar resources and play common roles assigned to the position. Positional similarity
would lead actors to observe and imitate one another in an attempt not to lag behind.
Such competition induced from structural equivalence is much less likely to exist in the
process of Facebook WOM in that their influence networks are primarily composed of
friendship-based affective ties. Of course, some relationships on Facebook might have a
stake in offline social contexts, for example being coworkers in the same company. The
interests underlying offline social contexts, however, do not directly intervene in the
process of social organizing on Facebook because the causes and motivations pursued by
most Facebook activities are independent from formal organizational situations.
Particularly, the influence from structural equivalence should be even more diluted when
it comes to college students social networks whose predominant proportions are
composed of primary affective ties rather than stakeholder relationships.
The structural equivalence effect may function not only in hierarchical or
competitive relationships but also many other social contexts. Feeley and Barnett (1996),
for example, discuss that employees turnover is affected by structural equivalence
depending on who people communicate with. While hierarchical authority and
92
competition might be minimally presented, the structural equivalence effect can exert
influence on Facebook. For example, it is possible that if certain information is shared by
A to B and C, the information helps B and C share the same attitude, even if B and C do
not directly communicate with each other. The structural equivalence mechanism,
however, is not explicated for further theoretical discussion in this paper due to the
computational difficulty with the vast network size. Nevertheless, one cannot assert that
the non-inclusion of this mechanism in the model neglects the implication of positional
characteristics on the social influence process. Although the proposed typology will not
convey additional theoretical discussions on structural equivalence, the prediction from
positional similarity will still be retained by considering structural cohesion. As stated
earlier, structural cohesion results in the same prediction of structural equivalence when
the operationalization is based on a complete network.
Structural cohesion is an important structural characteristic for effective WOM
because it determines an individuals level of embeddedness within a network, which
refers to the third mechanism. According to Granovetter (1985), an individuals social
action is coordinated within social networks. The more embedded an individual is within
a network, the less autonomy he or she maintains in decision-making because self-
interests are more dynamically interwoven with other members through the accumulated
social exchanges over time. Given that embeddeness implies the intensity and range of
social interactions, the extent of embeddedness on Facebook social networks can be the
indicator of the degree of social proximity an individual has with the others in a network.
If an individual is more strongly embedded in a network, the individual may be more
93
strongly affected by social proximity, and thus perceive a greater social pressure to adopt
what others do. Based on the embeddedness mechanism,
H3. Higher embeddedness will cause greater social pressure such that the
individual will be more likely to become involved in Facebook group activities than less
embedded individuals will.
Finally, these three mechanisms may reveal interaction effects on an individuals
decision making. One possible direction is the synergy effects. For example, if an
individual received a personal recommendation about a group from multiple friends and
also observed that many of his or her network friends also support the group, this direct
recommendation and contagion can produce a synergic effect to motivate the individual
to be a part of the group more intensively than either of the two mechanisms alone.
Likewise, if a person is deeply embedded in a network and observes that many others
follow the recommendation, the persons stronger sense of group affiliation may intensify
the contagion effect from observing others behavior.
Alternatively, different scenarios can hypothesize compensatory interaction
effects. For example, social contagion may be helpful to facilitate WOM outcomes only
when there is no personal recommendation effect found, or vice versa. Given the possible
scenarios about the interaction effect among the mechanisms, the existence of interaction
effects among the three mechanisms are hypothesized.
H4: There will be interaction effects between (a) the frequency of direct
recommendations and the degree of social contagion, (b) the frequency of direct
recommendation and an individuals embeddedness in a network, (c) the degree of social
contagion and an individuals embeddedness in a network.
94
RQ1: If any significant interaction effect is found, is the interaction pattern
synergic or compensatory?
6.3. Methods
6.3.1. Procedure
When the experiment was designed, I assumed that the ego networks would be
independent from each other. However, in reality each egos personal networks
overlapped in a non-trivial manner. Specifically, out of 72 egos, 56 turned out to be
identified as a friend of at least one of the other egos. Furthermore, 911 alters repeatedly
appeared across different personal networks. Figure 9 compares the real structure of
overlapping ego-networks with the independent personal network structures in theory.
A non-negligible portion of network overlap could mislead positional properties
of each alter if not given proper consideration. As exemplified in Figure 7, if personal
networks were treated as if they were perfectly independent of one another in contrast to
the real structure including overlaps, vertex As degree centrality would fail to be
properly calculated because the degree centrality would be differently defined depending
on which personal network vertex A is considered to be nested in. More importantly, an
alters multiple occurrences across different ego networks imply that the alter actually
receives the invitation message multiple times from different egos.
The solution for properly considering the network overlap is to aggregate all 72
personal networks into a system-level network and use the union network for analysis. In
the process of aggregation, I removed 6 non-human vertices, including Buffalo Hillel,
Buffalo RHA, Schussmeister Skiclub, Take Fresh Galaxy Molson, UBOAC and
UB Rock Climbing. Ten were also removed due to their failure to match the names
95
with other information. After calculating the relevant structural measures, egos were
removed from the further inferential tests simply because they were not the samples to be
observed. To conclude, a total of 3,971 invitees were put into the statistical models.
96
Figure 9. Presumed and Real Structure of Facebook Personal Networks
(a) Presumed structure of Facebook social networks, each of whose ego-
networks is independent to each other
(b) Real structure of Facebook social networks. The vertex As degrees vary
depending on where A is considered to be nested (1, if A is nested in Egonet 1, 3
in Egonet 2 and 5 in the whole network).
Note.
: edges connecting egos
: edges connecting between alters
: edges hidden until the networks are aggregated.
: e
97
6.3.2. Network Measures
Direct Personal Recommendations. The frequency of personal recommendations
an individual received was computed by simply counting the number of invitation
message senders (egos) who directly contacted the individual. Formally stated, direct
personal recommendations an individual i receives, Di, is defined as
B
= A
]
I
] ]
(4)
where A
ij
is the adjacency matrix in which the cell a
ij
is 1 if i and j are friend with each
other on Facebook and 0 if not, and L
j
the column vector indicating whether j is a
message sender (1 if message sender, 0 if not).
Social Contagion Effect. Social contagion occurs through the exposure to the
networked others. Accordingly, I borrowed the measure of PNE from the diffusion
literature as a proxy of the contagion effect (Valente, 1995). PNE refers to the degree to
which an individual witnesses others adoption behaviors within his or her personal
network. To formalize the variable personal network exposure PNE
i
for an individual i,
PNE
=
A
i]
M
]
-
i ]
A
i] j
(5)
where, A
ij
is the adjacency matrix mentioned in (4) and M
j
is the column vector indicating
whether j is a member of the Facebook group. Di is subtracted, because direct
recommenders are not the source of contagion. As evident in (5), PNE ranges from 0 to 1,
expressed as a proportion of the enacted friends to the degree of all connections an
individual has.
Embeddedness. To examine the effect of structural cohesion, embeddedness was
operationalized as follows. Specifically, an individual is understood as being more
embedded in personal community depending on the extent to which an individual is
98
included in a cohesive subgroup. I utilize the concept of Krackhardts simmelian-ties
(1998) to define a cohesive subgroup. According to Krackhardt (1998), the formal
definition of Simmels triadic relationship (1950) and Luce and Perrys concept of the
clique (1940) share a great similarity. Specifically, Krackhardt (1998) operationalizes
that two actors are simmelian-tied to each other if they are co-clique members. Therefore,
if an individual is a co-clique member more frequently, he or she is understood as having
more integrated relationships with other network members. Formally, the clique matrix
C
is,
c
k =
_
1, i i is tc mcmbcr o cliquc k
u, i not
(6a)
where C is a two-mode network. Multiplication of C with the transposed form C results
in K
K = CC (6b)
where K is the co-clique matrix whose off-diagonal value indicates the number of cliques
two individuals share. The row sum of K (excluding the diagonal value) is the total
frequency of an individuals being in co-cliques.
I assume that the increment of the embeddedness effect decreases as the level of
embeddedness becomes larger. For example, the difference between a person with 150
simmelian ties and a person with 151 simmelian ties will be much smaller than the
difference between a person with no simmelian tie at all and a person with one simmelian
tie. Considering the reduced incremental rate as the embeddedness level increases, I
propose to log-transform the row sum of K to quantify the score of embeddedness of each
individual. Therefore, the embeddedness of an individual i, E
i
, is
E
i
= ln ( K
ij
+1), i
]=1
j (6c)
99
where 1 is added for cases K
ij
= u
]=1
.
6.4. Results
6.4.1. Descriptive Analysis.
The union network aggregates 72 recruited egos personal networks. The sizes of
the ego network varied a great deal, ranging from 6 to 222. As mentioned earlier, after
the computation of network properties, egos were removed from further statistical tests.
Accordingly, 3,971 invitees were considered. The software ORA 2.0 (Carley, 2010) and
UCINET 6 (Borgatti, Everett, & Freeman, 2002) were used to create the system-level
network and to calculate the subsequent network variables.
Among the 3,971 invitees, a total of 883 supported the advocacy by joining the
group (22.2 percent). A single inviter (or ego) contacted the majority of invitees (N =
3,060, 77.1 percent). Among 22.9 percent invitees who received multiple invitations, 648
(16.3 percent) received the invitations from two inviters, 194 (4.9 percent) from three, 51
(1.35 percent) from four, 12 (0.3 percent) from five and 6 (0.1 percent) from more than
six inviters (M = 1.32, SD = 0.68).
Beside the direct personal recommendation received from egos, 63 percent of the
invitees were exposed to other invitees who became members of the advocacy group.
Specifically, 554 invitees (14 percent) were connected to one of the supporting invitees,
356 (9 percent) invitees to two, 316 (8 percent) to three, 251 (6.3 percent) to four, 181
(4.6 percent) to five and 843 (21.1 percent) to more than five supporters. On average, an
invitee was exposed to 3.39 friends who turned out to be a supporter of the group. As a
proportionate, the mean score of PNE was .12 (SD = .13), indicating that, on average, 12
percent of the invitees social contacts became group members.
100
To compute embeddedness, simmelian ties were first counted for each invitee. 14%
of invitees (N = 556) were not simmelian tied to anybody. For the rest of invitees who
had at least one simmelian tie, the variation was very large, ranging from 2 to 208. As
mentioned, the log-transformed value of simmelian ties was used as the variable of
embeddedness (M = 2.35, SD = 1.3). As seen in Table 10, all network variables were
correlated to one another.
Table 10. Mean, Standard Deviations, and Correlations of IVs (N = 3971).
1 2 3
1 Direct Contact -
2 Personal Network
Exposure
.04
**
-
3 Embeddedness .42
**
.31
**
-
Mean 1.32 0.12 2.35
(SD) (0.68) (0.13) (1.3)
Note: **p < .01.
6.4.2. Hypothesis Testing.
One evident feature of the dataset is the violation of the assumption of
independence of observations. The network properties of each invitee are non-
independent to other invitees properties within the network. For example, if actor A and
B are friends with each other, their PNE cannot be independently calculated from each
other because their friendship networks are very likely to contain mutual friends.
Given that the interdependence of cases is a frequently observed phenomenon in
social network datasets, one should be careful when performing standard multivariate test
101
because the correlated data can result in incorrect statistical inferences derived from the
biased standard errors (Zorn, 2001).
Two approaches may be proposed to consider the correlated data: The cluster-
specific (or subject-specific) model and the population-averaged model (Zorn, 2001).
Hierarchical Linear Model (HLM) is a representative technique for the cluster-specific
model. HLM is advantageous if a researcher hypothesizes that the covariates specific to
cluster-level should have a fixed or random effect on outcome variable. On the other
hand, Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) is the technique to assess the population-
averaged differences in outcome variables as a function of the covariates (Hu, Goldberg,
Hedeker, Flay, & Pentz, 1998). Although HLM is advantageous to model the unit-
specific effects, HLM assumes the normal distribution of random effects at each level
(individual and cluster level). GEE results in robust estimates when the normality of
random effects are not certain or the exact nature of the intra-cluster dependence is
unknown (Zorn, 2001, p. 472). I used GEE considering that the clustering in my dataset
is not clear-cut for some invitees who are affiliated with more than one opinion leaders
personal network as well as the fact that the cluster-level effect is not of interest in the
current study. GEE requires missing cases to be excluded, thus I included 3,958 invitees.
All variables were mean-centered before being put into the models.
Table 11 presents the results of the GEE predicting whether invited friends joined
the advocacy group. The result shows that those who receive multiple invitations are
more likely to join the advocacy group with the log odds B = 0.27, Wald Chi-square =
21.64, p < .001. The exponent of log odds was 1.31, indicating that the predicted odds of
joining the group changes by 1.31 times given one unit increase in direct contacts,
102
holding other variables constant. Therefore, based on these results, the null hypothesis of
H1 is rejected.
In regards to H2, the null hypothesis of no difference from PNE is rejected. The
results revealed that invitees with a higher PNE toward supporters of the advocacy were
significantly more likely to show their support by joining the group: log odds B = 1.25,
Wald Chi-square = 17.48, p < .001. The exponent of log odds was even greater, 3.49 with
a large confidence interval ranging from 1.94 to 6.26. In other words, a one-unit change
in PNE increases the likelihood of being a group member 3.49 times when other variables
are held constant.
H3 hypothesized the effect of individuals embeddedness on their likelihood of
joining the group. Although H3 was not supported, the tests of interaction effect revealed
the contribution of the variable as a moderator. Specifically, embeddedness moderated
the influence of both direct contacts and PNE: for the interaction with direct contact, log
odds B = -0.13, Wald Chi-square = 4.55, p < .05; for the interaction with PNE, log odds B
= .89, Wald Chi-square = 11.47, p < .01. Therefore, H4b and H4c were supported. The
interaction between direct contacts and PNE was not significant, so H4a is rejected.
To examine further the way embeddedness interacts with direct contacts and PNE,
I reran the model with two different levels of embeddedness. Specifically, the high level
of embeddedness, calculated by re-setting the mean score as one standard deviation
above (SD = 1.3), was put into the model to see how the high level of embeddedness
affected the degree of influence occurring from direct contacts and PNE.
Comparing to the results from Model 1 in Table 11, which shows that the direct
contacts effect increased the likelihood of joining the group 1.31 times, the addition of
103
the interaction term with the embeddedness increased the odds to 1.59 (Model 2 in Table
11). As described in Table 12, while the interaction effect on direct contacts was
significant across all three points of embeddedness, the interaction effect was the most
contributory when the embeddedness was low: When an individuals position within the
network is not highly embedded, the direct contacts effect increases, resulting in the odds
increase to 1.89 times given the one unit change of direct contacts. In other words, less
cohesively located individuals are more greatly influenced by the direct contact from
opinion leaders.
On the other hand, the interaction effect between the embeddedness and PNE
showed a different pattern. Compared to the Model 1 (in Table 11) that revealed a 3.49
increase in the odds of outcome by one unit increase in PNE when the embeddedness is
not considered, the addition of the interaction effect increased the PNE influence to 4.86,
indicating that one unit increase in PNE increases the odds of joining the group 4.86
times if the individuals network embeddedness is considered. As seen in Table 12, the
interaction effect is even greater for those who are highly embedded in the network: For
those who are deeply embedded in the network, the one unit change in PNE increased the
odds of joining the group 15.55 times! On the other hand, for those who are not located in
an embedded position within the network, the influence of PNE was not significant. In
other words, the influence of PNE was synergized when an individual is highly
embedded, or cohesively positioned, in a network.
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Table 11. GEE Models Predicting Contagion Effect on Invitees Support for the Advocacy Group (N = 3958)
Model 1
B SE Wald
Exp(B)
CI for Exp(B)
Sig. Lower Upper
DC***
0.27
0.06
21.64
0.000
1.31
1.17
1.46
PNE*** 1.25 0.30 17.48 0.000 3.49 1.94 6.26
Embeddedness -0.05 0.03 1.90 0.168 0.96 0.89 1.02
Model 2
B SE Wald
Exp(B)
CI for Exp(B)
Sig. Lower Upper
DC***
0.46
0.10
22.12
0.000
1.59
1.31
1.92
PNE*** 1.58 0.35 20.80 0.000 4.86 2.47 9.60
Embeddedness -0.07 0.04 3.42 0.064 0.94 0.87 1.00
DC x PNE -1.25 0.66 3.59 0.058 0.29 0.08 1.04
DC x Embeddedness* -0.13 0.06 4.55 0.033 0.88 0.78 0.99
PNE x Embeddedness** 0.89 0.26 11.47 0.001 2.44 1.46 4.10
Note: * p < .05, ** p< .01, *** p < .001; DC: Direct contact with opinion leader(s), PNE: PNE; Variables are
mean-centered.
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Table 12. The Effects of Direct Contact and PNE at Three Different Levels of
Embeddedness.
Predictor Embeddedness
1SD Below M 1SD Above
Direct
Contact B 0.63 0.46 0.3
Exp(B) 1.87*** 1.59 *** 1.34***
PNE B 0.42 1.58 2.74
Exp(B) 1.52 (n.s.) 4.86*** 15.55***
Note. n.s.: non-significant, *** p < .001, PNE: Personal Network Exposure
6.5. Conclusion and Discussions
Along with the popularity of Web 2.0-based communication technologies, e-
WOM is a commonly observed communication phenomenon in virtual social spaces.
While the majority of the literature on e-WOM targets its contribution to profit-driven
marketing and advertising sectors, e-WOM has also been an important communication
mode for social organizing activities such as social marketing and public campaigns. This
study underscores the potential of WOM communication to make Web 2.0-enabled
strategic communication particularly for the sake of the public good.
Social influence, consisting of individual and structural aspects, is understood as
the fundamental mechanism driving WOM effectiveness. Despite being as important as
individual influence, structural social influence has not been explored as rigorously as
individual influence due to the difficulty in accessing to relevant data. Taking advantage
of affordable online social network data, this chapter examined structural effects
occurring during the Facebook WOM process.
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Three mechanisms of Facebook structural influence - direct personal
recommendation, social contagion effect, and embeddedness - were conceptualized based
on the organizational social influence models: SIP and the social contagion model.
Borrowing the mathematical formalizations from social network analysis, each
component was measured and tested for how each component affected the likelihood of
the potential actors behavior. The findings indicate that both direct recommendation and
the contagion effect made significant contributions toward determining how the message
recipient would react.
In particular, the effect of personal network exposure was even larger than the
effect of direct recommendation. Normative influence occurs through Facebook social
networks such that people tend to follow or adopt the attitude or behavior of their own
friends. This finding suggests that the online social networks configured in Web 2.0 offer
an effective strategic communication alternative to the traditional mode of direct e-
solicitation such as sending recommendation emails or other kinds of online messages.
Such direct contacts online can be risky in that the message could possibly be perceived
as a sort of spamming that arouses a feeling of intrusiveness to a recipient. The
intrusiveness felt toward the message sender can be aggravated as the frequency that the
senders solicitation messages haunt the recipients inbox increases (Cao et al., 2009). As
advertising studies suggest, the level of intrusiveness is negatively associated with the
message effectiveness, inducing the selective avoidances against the message (e.g. Ha,
1996; Li, Edwards, & Lee, 2002; Nam, Kwon, & Lee, 2010).
On the other hand, the indirect exposure to significant others attitudes or
behaviors can effectively help an individual change his or her attitude or behavior toward
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the desired direction. The strategic planner can maximize contagion effects by adapting
Web 2.0 strategies that boost the accessibility to social information about others
thoughts, attitudes, ideas, or behaviors, so-called interpersonal visibility (Friedkin, 1993).
Facebooks social context advertising is a very exemplary strategy that attempts to pull
the most benefits from interpersonal visibility inherent in the digital networked-ness.
Because social the contagion effect occurs in a more subtle way than direct solicitation,
the emotional byproducts such as intrusiveness, boredom, or message avoidance is less
likely to be produced.
The contagion effect depends greatly on the social-structural context in which the
person is situated than the direct solicitation effect. It is evident from the findings in this
study as well in that the interaction effect between embeddedness and the contagion
effect was much greater than the interaction between embeddedness and direct contact.
While embeddedness was not an independent predictor of the outcome variable, it acted
as a moderator for other structural effects on the behavioral outcome. Particularly, a
direct personal recommendation was more effective when actors were not strongly
embedded within the network. This finding supports the argument that direct personal
recommendation is the compensatory communication mode for social influence on those
who were less integrated in interpersonal networks thus less likely to receive normative
influence from the network.
On the other hand, the embeddedness synergized the network exposure effect
such that contagion occurred 15 times more when actors were embedded in cohesive
groups than when actors were sparsely located. In other words, the role of the structural
cohesion as a moderator was more prominent when interacting with indirect exposure
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than with direct solicitation. In this sense, understanding the structural aspect of the
WOM process is a valuable task in the Web 2.0 contexts in which WOM is one of the
most common behavioral phenomena. While this project was based on a behavioral
experiment, the social-network analytic methods applied to this project lent a good start-
up to explore naturally occurring real-life WOM phenomena on Facebook or other SNS.
The project supports the potential for Facebook social networks to be an effective
venue for strategic communication. However, one should be cautious about asserting the
significance of the impact of social context advertising on promotions of the pro-social
behaviors that ask for more commitment than simple clicking. Hart and Greenwell
( 2009), for example, argues that the influence of communication technologies on the
process of fundraising might be exaggerated. They reported that less than three percent of
all fundraising is actually done online. In addition, among various online tools, the
Facebook Cause, a Facebook application developed for the purpose of nonprofits
campaign and fundraising, raises money even less than the direct e-mail solicitation (Hart
& Greenwell, 2009). Hurst (2009), the founder of the award-wining pro-bono service
foundation Taproot, criticizes that Facebook Cause lets millions of people get on the
wall with no donation, giving away one of the few benefits nonprofits can offer
donors (n.p.).
Considering social reward as a motive is important as a public-good oriented
motive that drives social participation (Klandermans, 1984), the concern is that
Facebook-driven social organizing could impede the non-profit performance by
increasing the number of good-person-pretenders who contribute little for actual social
change. Scholars need to be aware of the tension surrounding Web 2.0, between the
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bright prospect of its potential as an effective social organizing venue and the concern
about its inane achievement. It will be the future task to explore to what extent of
commitment is expected to be stood by online actors so that social influence through
digital social networks produces a meaningful change for the social goods.
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VII. EMERGENT GROUP STRUCTURES ON FACEBOOK: SCALE-FREE,
SMALL WORLD, AND NETWORK CENTRALIZATION
7.1. Literature Background
7.1.1. E-WOM as an Online Community Building Practice
The previous chapters discussed the two factors personal influence and
structural social influence - that determined the effectiveness of the e-WOM process.
Both are micro-level variables that influence individuals behaviors. This chapter
explores an emergent organizational phenomenon on the macro level: How does e-WOM
communication form a social organizing process on Facebook? While WOM has been
widely viewed as a marketing effort to garner consumers awareness and purchasing
behaviors, the applicability of this communication mode is not limited to commercial
marketing.
The WOM process is also observed in the mobilization processes for other types
of social actions. For example, scholars have shown that social movements follow a
diffusion cycle in which social network effects determine the rate of movement progress
(Oliver & Meyer, 2003). During the mobilization process, many recruited participants are
socially influenced by members of their personal networks who are already activists (Opp
& Gern, 1993). The network effect becomes more crucial for collective action in the
digital environment in which movement organizations are transformed toward loose
social networks among members who gain increased autonomy in searching for relevant
information and pursuing tactics for action coordination (Rheingold, 2003). In this
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context of online activism, broader mobilization through individual activists personal
networks without institutional intervention has been noted as being even more salient
(Bennett, Breunig, & Givens, 2008). Especially along with the prevalence of social
networking services online, WOM is de facto one of the most widely adapted strategies
for social organizational goals such as social marketing, public communication
campaigns and collective political actions.
The noteworthy aspect regarding the incorporation of web services into the big
picture of strategic communication is that the audience can take an active part in the
process of communication. Web-based interactive campaigns encourage social
interactions, not only between campaigners and audiences, but also among the audiences
themselves, on which audiences can spontaneously create issue- or product-relevant
communities (Lieberman, 2001). Web 2.0 services including SNS magnify this tendency
that transforms institutionalized top-down strategic communication into a community-
building practice among likeminded end-users.
7.1.2. SNS as a Network of Personal Communities
Conceptualizing strategic communication as the process of community building
necessitates revisiting sociological discussions about how to understand community. As
Wellman, Carrington, and Hall (1988) note, community in contemporary worlds does not
merely depend on the localism or predefined socio-demographic conditions. Rather than
designating who should be members by a fixed set of criteria, community shifts from a
bounded set of membership owners who qualify the prerequisites to permeable social
networks in which the degree of social interactions with others becomes a core element to
decide a persons affiliation with the whole.
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In other words, in contrast to modern sociologists concerns about the loss of
community (for details about the sociological skepticisms on the demise of community,
see Wellman, Carrington, & Hall, 1988, p.125) and the subsequent reduction in social
capital (e.g. Putnam, 2000), communities flourish in contemporary generations.
Communities have been transformed from being densely knit, unified and locality-based
to the sparsely knit, fragmented, and common interest-based (Wellman, 1996).
Computer-mediated communities characteristically present how the traditional
notion of community is replaced with the notion of social networks (Wellman, 1996).
Scholars have analyzed online communities in relation to offline communities. Some
implied concern that the Internet decreases community by drawing peoples attention to
mediated entertainment from face-to-face social interactions or local community
activities (e.g. Nie, Hillygus, & Erbring, 2002). Others have proposed a transformative
perspective that traditional offline communities would transmute into a new nature
affected by social, political and cultural consequences stemming from virtual community
activities (e.g. Rheingold, 2003).
Between the two extreme perspectives, it seems that scholars have dialectically
converged into a supplementation view, highlighting that online communication helps the
pursuit of relational ends by adding a means of social interaction to preexisting modes
such as telephone and face-to-face contacts. For example, the majority of online women
use email to communicate with their immediate families, relatives, and close friends
(Rainie, Fox, Horrigan, Lenhart, & Spooner, 2000). Stefanone and Jang (2007) indicate
that the majority of bloggers adopt the tool as an alternative communication mode to
share personal thoughts and feelings with others within their personal networks, although
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personality traits may moderate their usage behaviors. Scholars have noted that the
Internet helps users maintain expanded ranges of weakly tied relationship, often
uncovering latent ties that might have not been in touch if it were not for the digital
connectedness (Haythornthwaite, 2002; Wellman & Gulia, 1999; Wellman, Quan-Haase,
Boase, Chen, Hampton, et al., 2003). Wellman and his colleagues (2003), who have a
supplementation view, characterize the online community as computer-supported social
networks which sustain multiplex social ties that convey information and social support
for personal life, organizational collaboration and societal mobilization.
The supplementation perspective on online communities is especially compatible
with the rise of recent Web 2.0 social networking technologies. The tendency to build a
personal community through mediated interpersonal communication is particularly
prominent along with the recent rise of SNS. As evident in its name social networking
site, the essential goal of SNS is to serve as a web platform of building a personal
community. The goal is effectively obtained through Web 2.0 technologies by, first,
easily integrating private single-sender CMC applications (e.g. email) and open
groupware (e.g. discussion boards, listserv) into a unified interface (e.g. Facebook
personal profile) and, second, fomenting networking behaviors through recommendation
systems. When the SNS is successfully adopted, the website itself becomes a giant social
network that amasses individual users personal communities.
As Donath (2007) proposes, one innovative feature of SNS is that it enables
individuals to maintain immense egocentric networks. She calls SNS a social supernet,
which makes social grooming temporally efficient and cognitively effective (n.p.). A
prevalence of social supernet is an interesting online phenomenon that encourages ego-
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network scholars to redefine the preexisting understanding of personal community.
According to the anthropologist Dunbar and his colleagues (e.g. Dunbar & Spoors, 1995;
Robert, et al., 2009; Hill & Dunbar, 2003), cognitive and time constraints have been the
primary barriers that limit the size of active personal networks. Ordinary people maintain
intimate social circles of around ten individuals in which social support and emotional
attachment are primarily produced, not because of spontaneous preference to the
particular size but because of given cognitive and temporal limitations. Considering that
SNS is a useful mnemonic and time saver for relational ends, the effective utilization of
SNS may increase individuals capacity to manage larger social circles.
Using SNS helps users to not only enlarge the boundary of intimate personal
community but also to maintain a greater number of weak ties. This is possible by
cumulating relational histories in an online personal space and by rediscovering
relationships once forgotten through a recommendation or notification system. Moreover,
as long as relationships are interwoven (e.g., a friend of mine is also a friend of another
friend), SNS unfolds its interconnected nature across personal communities. Explication
of social interconnectedness reduces anonymous behaviors and subsequently enhances
trustworthiness toward an individuals virtual actions.
In sum, the features of SNS, including the enlarged size of intimate relationships,
heightened reliability of virtual interactions, and the ability to reach a wide range of
social contacts, make this particular CMC platform a useful communication technology
for social organizing activities such as collective actions and information diffusion.
7.1.3. Social Network Structures in SNS
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On a micro-level, individual users construct and maintain personal communities
on SNS led by their psychological motivations, for example the desire of reputation-
building, self-presentation and impression management (e.g. Boyd, 2008; Boyd & Ellison,
2007; Lamp, Ellison, & Steinfield, 2007; Wang, et al., 2010; Walther, et al., 2009). The
majority of SNS studies discuss individual motivations based on the theoretical
framework proposed by traditional CMC research.
Although fully appreciating the insights learned from such literature, the
individualistic approach tends to limit the investigation to either a dyadic relational
situation or a controlled small group condition. Consequently, the individualistic
approach may disregard larger social contextual effects and structural outcomes
(Wellman & Guilia, 1999; Wellman et al., 2003).
Two reasons can be suggested as to why SNS scholars need to highlight structures
configured in SNS. The first is that, as far as SNS is a social space, an individuals
behavior in SNS cannot be purely spontaneous. Once a person is aware that the self is
embedded in a larger social context, the persons action is not solely based on his or her
free will. For example, the person might reciprocate what he owes because of the
awareness that his behavior is visible to other social actors. As much as individuals are
embedded in social networks, their behaviors in a dyadic interaction are likely to be
recognized by not only the communication partner within the dyad but also other social
relations beyond the dyads. Stated differently, social embeddedness reduces anonymous
communication and reinforces trust-building processes among community members
(Granovetter, 1985). CMC scholars need to delve into this aspect, given that anonymity
has been an important topic associated with other CMC issues such as self-disclosure,
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privacy, and disinhibition. Considering that a deceitful identity management would cost
more than the benefits if an individual is tethered to social contexts than if the individual
meets a person in isolation, elucidated interconnectedness in SNS is likely to produce a
norm of truthfulness (Donath, 2007).
The second reason SNS scholars need to look at the structural aspect is because
the collection of individuals micro-interactions results in the production of macro-level
group or organizational properties that can be properly understood by a structural
approach. Like other offline organizations (Monge & Contractor, 2003), SNS evolve
along with the emergent properties that are more than the mere aggregation of individual-
level activities. In a SNS, a very large network composed of multiplexed egocentric
communities, serves as a social world, which nurtures norms, conventions, roles and
responsibilities. The inquiries posited in this chapter are based on the idea that the SNS is
a form of social organization whose emergent properties can be captured through a
structural approach.
The analysis of network structural features helps reveal social mechanisms
underlying collective contingencies. Organizational studies have adopted network
analysis actively to examine the longitudinal evolution of group structures (Barnett &
Rice, 1985; Burkhardt & Brass, 1990; Shah, 2000; Barnett, 2001). The performance of a
certain community as a whole system may be predicted by evaluating network properties
such as heterogeneity, connectivity and cohesion. For example, Barnett and his colleague
have analyzed longitudinal changes in structures of international telecommunication
networks: When the individual uses of telephony were aggregated into a national level,
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the whole picture revealed a core-periphery network, supporting the validity of World
System theory (Barnett, 2001; Barnett & Choi, 1995).
While Barnett and Choi (1995; 2001) take a structural approach to understand
communication activity on a global level, other scholars have examined the structure
patterns within a bounded organizational or community settings. For example, Moody
and White (2003) found that the structure that emerged from the longitudinal co-
authoring practices among sociologists was a well-connected social network (or so-called
cohesive network), yet there was a large inequality in numbers of collaborators. This
network structure indicates that the collaborative networks among social scientists do
include superstars who have much more influence shaping ideas than others, perhaps
acting as pumps for ideas that are then quickly circulated through the well-connected
regions of community, generating generalized consensus (Moody & White, 2003, pp.
235-236). Some scholars investigate network structures to discuss selection and social
influence processes that govern the homophily phenomena. Christakis and Fowler (2007),
for example, indicate that obese and non-obese people clustered in separate networks
more highly than the random expectation. Moody (2001) studied friendship interactions
among secondary school students. He found that the network structure exhibits the
densely-knit racially homogeneous social circles that were weakly connected to each
other, empirically supporting the existence of racial homophily among young social
actors.
Surprisingly, however, communication scholars are hesitant in applying the
structural perspective to study the evolution of online communities including SNS. It is
partly due to the lukewarm interest in using a structural approach to look at
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communication systems among the scholars, having only a few scholars in this line.
According to Newman (2001), analysis of social network structure has been an intriguing
topic for social scientists due to its important implications for the spread of information
and disease. According to him, it is clear, for example, that variation in just the average
number of acquaintances that individuals have (also called the average degree of the
network) might substantially influence the propagation of a rumor, a fashion, a joke, or
this year's flu (Newman, 2001, p.404).
Likewise, analyzing macro-structures of the social organizing process in SNS can
contribute to the understanding of sociological mechanisms for information and social
influence diffusion process. In an applied context, specifically, this type of analysis can
be useful to assess what kinds of social processes are underlying SNS-mediated
communication campaigns: Mapping the emergent structural patterns may help locate
positions of the influentials or the boundary-spanners. Such findings may help educate
practitioners how to recruit changing agents for more effective campaign communication
with the target community (Rogers, 2003).
7.1.4. Scale-Free, Small-World Network Structures, and Network Centralization
Network scholars have found two structural topologies widely exhibited in social
as well as natural systems: scale-free and small-world networks. These two topologies
have been observed in the formation of many social organizations, such as collaborative
networks among artists (Uzzi & Spiro, 2004), the scientific community (Newman, 2001),
co-authorship networks (Moody & White 2003) and the World Wide Web structure
(Barabasi, 2009; Park & Barnett, 2005; Barnett, Chung, & Park, in press; Hindman, 2009;
Park, Barnett, & Chung, in press). Assuming that the formation of the virtual community
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in Facebook should be a process of social organizing (e.g. mobilizing collective
behaviors), I propose that the two network properties also be observed as emergent
structures in this project.
1) Scale-free Network: A scale-free network is a network type formed based on
the rule of popularity. According to Barabasi (2009), a scale-free network is found
universally across varied ranges of real networks from biological systems to computer
networks. A scale-free network is characterized as being highly imbalanced in the
distribution of degree centrality (i.e. number of connections a node gets from other
nodes). In other words, there are only a few extremely highly linked nodes followed by
the majority who have much fewer links. Barabasi (2009) explains that the emergence of
scale-free networks is based on two mechanisms, growth and preferential attachment:
The scale-free typology explains the process of network growth in which a new node is
added with its preference to attach to the more prestigious nodes. Stated differently, the
process of network formation follows a rich-get-richer model in which popular nodes
exponentially boost their own popularity as the network evolves (Easley & Kleinberg,
2010).
There are several motivations for preferential attachment in real social networks.
For the example of in-links structure of the Web, a scale-free network emerges because
users may be prone to hyperlink to popular websites because of the high credibility
attributed to well-acknowledged websites (Barabasi & Alberto, 1999). In cultural markets,
such as books, movies, and music, winner-takes-all happens not just due to the
straightforward induction from quality to success but also because consumers choice of
something particular over the competitors is influenced by others decision-making
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(Salganik, Dodds, & Watts, 2006). The expectation of the halo effect can also be a
motivation. In SNS, for example, people are more attracted to befriend a so-called
superstar who already has many followers because befriending a popular individual can
produce a halo effect through which a person might take advantage of the friends
reputation.
Being a real social network in which such motivations are expected to affect users
relational behaviors, the Facebook social network is also likely to form a scale-free
topology. Furthermore, as in the offline context, communication activities on Facebook
can be conceived as investments to relationships through which (a person) gains
access to embedded resources to enhance expected returns of instrumental or expressive
actions (Lin, 1999, p. 39). In other words, Facebook is a social space in which users
build social capital through social interactions with their friends (Ellison, Steinfield, &
Lampe, 2008; Lewis, et al. 2008). In this sense, those highly connected are likely to build
more social capital, particularly entrepreneurial capital that is highly embedded in a
personal network consisting of sizable weak ties (Burt, 1992; Granovetter, 1973), than
the less connected. Entrepreneurial capital is analogous to bridging capital in that it gives
the individual the advantage of informational access and instrumental returns, rather than
emotional support inherent in bonding capital (Adler & Kwon, 2002; Lin, 2002; Putnam,
2000).
Strategic communication can be successful by taking advantage of
entrepreneurial capital of the highly connected who can exert greater social influence and
mobilize more resources than the rest of the less connected. Accordingly, when a sub-
community on Facebook is formed as a consequence of strategic communication, the
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community is likely to reveal a scale-free network structure which includes a few leading
actors who draw many new members and large portions of marginal actors.
H1: The online community formed on Facebook will show a scale-free network
structure.
2) Small-world network: Another widely observed network topology is the small-
world network. This network typology is characterized as including local clusters that are
connected by a few numbers of bridging actors. Even though members within a local
cluster may not acquaint directly with those in other clusters, members in different
clusters are able to be contacted if one passes through a few contacts. This characteristic
is widely known as six degrees of separation, which was first explored by Milgram
(1967) who experimented whether a letter from a randomly chosen local actor could
reach the unknown designator through social connections. Despite being imperfect, his
1967 study provided evidence for the existence of a short path in global friendship
network, triggering many follow-up studies across various disciplines (Easley &
Kleinberg, 2010, p. 537).
The existence of small-world networks has been empirically supported by many
real social networks, for examples scientific collaboration networks (Newman, 2001),
diffusion networks of infectious disease (Watts & Strogatz, 1998), German corporate
ownership (Kogut & Gordon, 2001), and Broadway musical collaborations (Uzzi & Sprio,
2005). Watts (1999) and Watts and Strogatz (1998) formalized the condition for small
world networks in terms of two parameters: Clustering coefficients and average path
length (the average shortest distance between pairs of vertices). Their study (1998)
identifies that a small-world network shows (a) a similar average path length to the
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average path length of random network and (b) a significantly larger clustering
coefficient than that of a random network.
The Facebook social network is assumed to present small-world tendencies
because our personal community includes multiplexed social ties that are from different
group affiliations. Accordingly, the personal network is likely to display alters being
clustered in a few groups. In addition, some alters are likely to be affiliated with multiple
groups (e.g. if a housemate is also a church member, the housemate stretches over the
cluster of housemates and the cluster of church friends, possibly playing the role of
intermediary between the clusters). However, it is expected that the extent of the small-
world tendency will be different depending on an individuals own relational
characteristics. For example, an individual who has attended two different high schools
and transferred from one to another college will maintain a different personal network
structure particularly in terms of number of local clusters and number of friends who
traverse different clusters from an individual who has attended only a single high
school and college. Accordingly,
H2: The extent of exhibiting small-world tendency will be significantly different
among the examined ego-networks.
Small-world network scholars have argued that this network topology might
account for how quickly disease, rumors, and ideas can spread in a certain community or
society (Uzzi & Spiro, 2005). Carley et al. (2009) describe how the small-world network
is conceived by a graph theoretical approach:
[Small-world network] is a type of graph in which most nodes are NOT neighbors of
one another, but most nodes can be reached from every other node by a small number of
hops or steps. A small world network, where nodes represent people and links connect
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people that know each other, captures the small world phenomenon of strangers being
linked by a mutual acquaintance (p.134, capitals in original).
In a small-world structure, although the majority of actors are embedded in local
clusters and are thus not aware of others ideas or behaviors in different clusters, the
disconnected actors are not independent because they are connected by intermediaries.
Therefore, even though locally enacting, community members are able to reach general
consensus or uniform actions on a collective level. Moreover, the pace of diffusion is
much more rapid than in a regular network (with the equal distribution of degrees) thanks
to the bridging actors who shorten path lengths between pairs of nodes (Watts & Strogatz,
1998). In this sense, as a social network reveals stronger small-world tendencies, the
network is likely to spread information and social influence more promptly and is thus
easier to be mobilized for a collective action. Based on this rationale, I hypothesize:
H3: Small-world tendency of a personal network will positively contribute to
mobilize group members.
3) Structural Difference Between the Mobilized Group and the Group of Non-
actors: I mentioned earlier that Facebook as a social organizing practice is affected by
WOM communication. The hypotheses posited above assume that scale-free network and
small-world phenomenon are the two structural characteristics that are expected to be
generically observed in Facebook social networks. One remaining question, then, is what
structural feature can uniquely be attributed to WOM-based formation of social
organization. If there is a difference between strategically evolved community and
general networks formed through ordinary networking processes, it is worth highlighting
the difference and discussing the cause. To examine the structural differences, I will
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compare three commonly investigated network characteristics: scale-free, small-world,
and additionally, network centralization.
Structural configuration of centralized network is similar to scale-free topology.
While scale free network focuses on the degree distribution of the whole network,
centralization measure highlights the discrepancy between individual actors who occupy
the most central and marginal positions. While all scale free networks should be
characterized as being centralized to some degree, there can a difference to what extent it
is centralized. Figure 10 presents two computer-generated scale-free networks that reveal
different network centralization scores. Centralization has been adopted as a useful
parameter to examine system level structures of communication networks (e.g. Barnett &
Sung, 2005; Park & Barnett, 2005; Barnett et al., in press; Park et al., in press; Lee,
Monge, Bar, & Matei, 2007).
R1: Are there structural differences particularly, in terms of scale-free, small-
world, and network centralization between a strategically-formed Facebook group (i.e.
formed through WOM) and the general structures configured in Facebook social
networks?
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Figure 10. Centralization Comparison between Two Scale-Free Networks
Scale Free Network 1 Scale Free Network 2
Visualization
Node 100 100
Edges 341 215
Density 0.03 0.02
Mean of
Degree 4.78 4.3
SD of Degee 8.07 3.78
Degree
Centralization 0.27 0.18
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7.2. Methods
7.2.1. Network Data for the Inquiry
The data used in this chapter is same as in the chapter 5: personal networks of 72
recruited egos who spread the recommendation messages to a total of 3981 alters. Among
the 3981, 883 alters successfully joined the advocacy group. Because egos who initiated
the diffusion were arbitrarily recruited by a researcher, they are essentially confederates
of the experiment. Given that it was in egos personal networks that the recommendation
messages were spread, it is not surprising that egos are located in the emerged
community as highly central in terms of their degrees and betweenness. Therefore, as
long as egos are put into considered, scale-free and small-world structure are highly
likely to appear because both properties assume a few highly central nodes.
Considering that egos involved in the community on the experimental purpose
rather than through naturally occurring influence process, egos and their edges were
removed from examining community structure. As a consequence, the examined
advocacy network retains only 883 alters. Figure 11 visualizes (a) a real advocacy
community with 883 nodes, the theoretically ideal (b) scale-free network and (c) small-
world network, and (d) the network with the random distribution of edges. (b), (c), and (d)
include the same number of nodes and edges to the real network.
Testing the emergence of scale-free network (H1) is based on the whole advocacy
network of 885 nodes. On the other hand, the effect of small-world tendency on the
recruitment performance (H2 and H3) is tested with each 72 ego-network as a unit of
analysis. Lastly, detecting the characteristics of advocacy community distinctive from
127
general Facebook social network (R1) is based on the comparison between the advocacy
network of 885 nodes and the network composed of alters who did not join the group, in
other words, those who were not susceptible to WOM message.
Figure 11. Visualization of Network Formation: Real versus Theoretical Networks
(N
nodes
= 883, N
edges
= 4,479)
a. Real network of interest b. Theorized small-world network
b. Theorized scale-free network d. Randomly generated network
128
7.2.2. Formalizations
Scale-free network
A scale-free network is characterized as its degree distribution following a power-
law such that,
P(k)~ k
-
(7)
in which the probability that a vertex in the network has connections with k other vertices
(degree k) in a power law with the exponent r (Barabasi & Alberto, 1999). The power-
law distribution is represented linearly when plotted on a log-log scale (Moody, 2003).
Put mathematically,
P(k) = ok
-
lnP(k) = ln(o) r ln(k) (8)
To examine scale-free network, degree distribution of the advocacy group was
computed. Then, the degree and the frequency of each degree were log-transformed to
test whether a linear relationship is established between the log-transformed values.
Small-world network
A small-world network is characterized by two network properties: Average path
length (L) and average clustering coefficient (C). Average path length refers to the
average of the shortest distance, so-called geodesic (Wasserman & Faust, 2004), between
every pair of vertices. The average clustering coefficient is the average of the density of
sub-graphs, each of which is composed of a set of neighboring vertices that are directly
connected to each vertex i, and the subsequent edges. For a detailed formalization of the
clustering coefficient, refer to the formula (2a) in Chapter 4.
129
Watts and Strogatz (1998) formalize the properties of a small-world network
(with N vertices and K edges per vertex) such that:
I I
undom
~
InN
InK
(9a)
and
C C
undom
~
K
N
( 1) (9b)
Accordingly, if a network is considered as small-world, L/L
random
(L- ratio)
is
close to 1 (but not less than 1) and C/C
random
(C-ratio) is much greater than 1. Based on
these formalizations, I computed L and C of each ego-network and the expected
approximates of L
random
and C
random
of the counterpart random network of each ego-
network.
4
Exploration of the small-world network also needs to meet two preconditions:
First, every node needs to be reachable (Watts & Strogatz, 1998; Moody, 2003) and
second, the number of edges per vertex K has to be bigger than the network size N (Watts
& Strogatz, 1998). Accordingly, the examination of the small-world phenomenon was
based on the biggest component (the network in which nodes are all connected;
Wasserman & Faust, 1994) of each ego-network. The networks that include K less than N
were left out for computation.
Network Centralization
Network centralization quantifies the range or variability of the individual
actors (centrality) indices (Wasserman & Faust, 1994, p.176). If the gap between the
4
To make sure that the computed L
random
and C
random
are the correct representation
of random network properties, I generated 100 random networks including the same
number of vertices and edges to the real network and compared the mean score of L and
C of 100 random networks with L
random
and C
random
, which were computed following
Wattss and Strogatzs procedure (1998). The results were close, justifying the use of
Wattss and Strogatzs (1998) computation.
130
most highly central individual(s) and the least central individual(s) is big, the resulting
centralization score is also large.
Degree centralization measures how imbalanced the vertices are in terms of the
number of edges they have. It is formalized by Freeman (1978/1979):
C
=
| C
D
(n
)- C
D
n
i=1
(n
i
)]
MAX| C
D
(n
)- C
D
n
i=1
(n
i
)]
(10a)
where the numerator C
(n
(n
) is the
degree of the vertex i and the denominator is the maximum possible difference between
C
(n
) and C
(n
)- C
D
n
i=1
(n
i
)]
|(n-1)(n-2)]
(10b)
Betweenness centrality is defined as the heterogeneity of the betweenness of the
members of the network. Here, betweenness refers to the extent to which a vertex is
located on the shortest path between two other vertices (Wasserman & Faust, 1994). The
more a vertex is passed through, the higher the vertexs betweenness centrality is. In a
social network perspective, betweenness centrality represents an actors ability to control
social interactions or information transfer between pairs of other actors in the network.
Therefore, betweenness centralization refers to the imbalance of individual actors ability
to control the information or behavioral flow. Freeman (1978/79) formalized
betweenness centralization,
C
B
=
2| C
B
(n
)- C
B
n
i=1
(n
i
)]
n
3
-n
2
+ 5n-2
(11)
7.3. Results
Scale Free Network?
131
The mean degree of the 883 group members was 5.07 (SD = 5.61) and non-group
members (M = 16.05, SD = 19.07). Although non-group showed higher mean degree
when un-scaled, the comparison between normalized versions, which divides simple
degree by the maximum degree possible (Freeman, 1971), results higher mean degree for
group members than no-group member (for group members, M = .00573, SD = .00635;
for non-group members, M = .0052, SD = .00619). There was a statistical difference
between normalized mean degrees, t(3,970) = - 2.23, p = .026.
Figure 12 shows the degree distribution resulting from the advocacy group.
Evidently, the distribution is highly skewed, revealing the possibility of a power-law
relationship. Statistical testing showed that the observed distribution fit a power law,
showing a significant linear relationship between the log of degree and the log of
frequency in which each degree appeared: F(1, 32) = 228.60, r
2
= .88, adjusted r
2
= .87, p
< .001 (Figure 13). Therefore, the null of hypothesis 1 is rejected.
Meanwhile, the relationship is not strictly linear in that 13 percent variances
unaccounted for by the power-law. The regression analysis with an additional block
including a squared term to the regression explains 6.6 percent more of the variance,
F
change
(1,31) = 35.54, p < .001, improving the model fit to r
2
= .94, adjusted r
2
= .94. In
other words, whereas a scale-free typology plays a large part in structuring the emerged
network, additional mechanisms also contribute.
132
Figure 12. Degree Distribution of Members in the Advocacy Group (M = 5.07, SD
=5.61).
Figure 13. Log-log Plot to Test Scale-Free Network.
133
Small-World Effect on Mobilization
As mentioned above, one of the preconditions that needs to be qualified prior to
testing the small-world phenomenon is connectivity among the nodes: All nodes have to
be reachable by one another. To meet the precondition, the subnetworks composed of the
biggest component were generated from the original data of each ego-network (I term the
component-based sub-network of each ego network componet hereupon).
Another precondition for the investigation is that K should be larger than N. A
total of 68 components met the second precondition, and were thus analyzed further.
While the mean size of the original ego networks was 79.10 (SD = 53.82), the network
size reduced to 73.00 (SD = 52.45) for the components. The average number of edges a
vertex has is 14.15 (SD = 12.70). The average path length of each componet was 2.12
(SD = .52) with an average clutersting coefficient of 0.55 (SD = .15). The mean of small-
world parameter L-ratio was 1.20 (SD = .25) and C-ratio was 3.03 (SD = 1.69). Table 13
summarizes the descriptive statistics.
Table 13. Descriptive Statistics of 67 Componets.
Min Max M SD
Component Size (N) 4.00 222.00 73.00 52.45
Size of Original Network 5.00 222.00 79.10 53.82
Edges Count 8.00 9984.00 1354.15 1868.76
Edges Count/N (K) 1.53 72.88 14.15 12.70
Average Path length (L) 1.19 3.39 2.12 0.52
Clustering Coefficient (CC) 0.19 0.88 0.55 0.15
L/L
random
(L-ratio) 0.20 1.58 1.20 0.25
CC/CC
random
(C-ratio) 1.03 9.99 3.03 1.69
Note. Only the biggest components considered for each ego-network
134
Hypothesis 2 posits that ego-networks will have a differentiated tendency toward
small-world structure due to the dissimilar personal background in which an ego has
formed and maintained social relationships. Two parameters of small-world structure, L-
ratio and C-ratio revealed significant differences among the components: For L-ratio, t(66)
= 39.838, p < .001; for C-ratio, t(66) = 14.716, p< .001, supporting the hypothesis.
Hypothesis 3 posited the positive effect of the small-world structure on the actual
outcome of mobilization. To test the hypothesis, I split the cases into two groups: one
showing the small-world tendency and the other not showing it. The division was based
on the theoretical parameters, i.e. the L-ratio should be close to 1 (but not less than 1) and
C-ratio should be much greater than 1. Here, I used the mean scores as specific criteria
such that a network is considered as small-world, if (a) the L -ratio is equal to or less than
1.20 with the lowest bound 1 and (2)the C-ratio is equal to or larger than 3.03.
Following this criteria, 27 networks were identified as having a small-world structure,
while 40 were not considered so.
Regression analysis was conducted with the number of recruited alters as a
dependent variable.
5
The dependent variable was coded into a 7-point scale due to the
skewness. As previously explained in chapter 4: On average, 3.89 (SD = 1.42) alters were
mobilized to join the group from the ego networks that had a small-world structure, and
5
One might argue that a sample size of 67 is too small to use as a model for the
sequential regression analysis. Given that the unit of analysis is not an individual but a
whole network, however, difficulty in data collection has been widely understood and a
relatively small sample size has also been excused. Many preexisting
group/organizational studies that explore network effects on group-level performance
conducted regression analyses with even smaller numbers of cases (and with more
independent variables). For examples, see Sparrowe, Linden, Wayne, and Kraimer (N =
38 cases; 2001) , Mehra, Dixon, Brass, and Robertson (N =28; 2006) , and Rulke and
Galaskiewicz (N = 39; 2000) .
135
2.28 alters (SD = 1.22). The regression analysis result revealed that, with the network size
controlled, the small-world tendency has a positive effect on the alters joining the group,
accounting for 2.2% of the additional variances: F (2, 64) = 61.82, p < .001, R
2
= .66,
Adjusted R
2
= .65. In other words, recruitment by an ego was more effective when an
ego-network has a small-world structure (Table 14).
Table 14. Small-world Effect on Network Recruitment (N = 67).
Model Variables
B SE Beta
t
1 (Constant) 1.137 .201
5.665
Network Size*** .023 .002 .800 10.753
F(1,65) = 115.63, p < .001 , R
2
= .64, Adjusted R
2
= .64
2 (Constant) 1.113 .196 5.674
Nework Size*** .020 .002 .715 8.571
Small-World?* .529 .257 .172 2.060
F
change
(1,64) = 4.24, p < .05, R
2
change
= .022
Final F (2, 64) = 61.82, p < .001, R
2
= .66, Adjusted R
2
= .65
Note. *** p < .001, * p < .05
Structural Comparison between the WOM-based Community and the General Social
Networks on Facebook
Finally, structural characteristics are compared to see whether there is any
difference between the strategically formed social networks and the generically
configured networks on Facebook. To do so, I compare the two social networks: the
advocacy group that emerged from this project (N=883) and the network including the
rest of the alters who did not respond to the recommendation (N= 3,087). Three types of
136
structural characteristics are examined: scale-free, small-world, and network
centralization (degree and betweenness).
While it is possible to compare the scale-free structure between the networks of
dissimilar sizes, comparing small-world structure and centralization cannot be directly
performed between the different sizes due to the measurement sensitivity of network size.
Specifically, as seen in the formulas above, the calculation of clustering coefficients and
average path lengths are not independent from the number of edges that exponentially
increases as the network size grows. Also, the maximum difference between two vertices
centrality, which is put as a denominator when computing centralization, is also
influenced by the network size the larger the network size, the bigger the maximum
difference is. Therefore, small-world structure and centralization are tested not by direct
comparison between the two networks but by the following procedures: (1) generating
random expectations of each network, (2) producing the ratios between the real and
random values for each network then, (3) eyeballing how different the ratios are.
1) Scale-free networks: Hypothesis 1 above tested the existence of scale-free
properties in the emergence of the advocacy group. Scaling in a log-log plot found a
negative linear relationship between degrees and their frequencies, supporting that the
degree distribution followed a power-law. The equivalent procedure was performed
based on the degree distribution of the social network composed of unresponsive alters.
The result was strikingly similar to the advocacy network. Furthermore, when the non-
linear term was added to the model of advocacy social network, 6.6 percent variance was
additionally accounted for. This result was also the same for the case of non-actors
network: The same amount of variance, 6.6 percent, was accounted for by adding the
137
squared term. The equivalent results between the advocacy group and non-actor group
suggest that the scale-free network is not a unique structure that emerged as a
consequence of strategic communication. Rather, it is a universal social network structure
on Facebook. Table 15 shows how similar the results are between the two networks
when it comes to the scale-free property.
Table 15. Scale-Free Structure of Strategically Emerged and Generic Social Networks on
Facebook.
a. Advocacy network formed through WOM communication
R R
2
Adj. R
2
SE
Change Statistics
R
2
change
F
change(df1,df2)
Linear .937
a
.877 .873 .51610 .877 228.603
(1,32)
***
Linear +Non-
linear .971
b
.943 .939 .35791 .066 35.536
(1, 31)***
b. Network composed of alters who were not affected by WOM Communication
R R
2
Adj. R
2
SE
Change Statistics
R
2
change
F
change(df1,df2)
Linear .936
a
.877 .876 .47260 .877 733.154
(1,103)
***
Linear +Non-
linear .971
b
.943 .942 .32237 .066 119.376
(1,102)
***
Note. *** p < .001
2) Small-World Networks: Components of the advocacy network (N = 665) and
the network of unresponsive alters (N = 2,087) were created. For a better understanding,
Table 16 compares the results from this study to the four preexisting well-known small-
138
world networks (Kogut & Walker, 2001; Watts & Strogatz, 1998): The film actors
network is a co-participation network of Hollywood actors in films. The power grid
network is the network among generators, transformers, and substations in the western
United States. C. Elegans is the neural network of a worm. Last, the German network is
a network of German firms connected through ownerships.
Table 16. Small-World Network in Facebook: A Comparison
Path Length
Clustering
Coefficient
Actual-to-
Random Ratio
Data
Source Network Actual Random Actual Random L-ratio C-ratio
W&S
Film-actors 3.65 2.99 0.79 0.001 1.22 2,925.9
Power grid 18.7 12.4 0.08 0.005 1.51 16
C.Elegans 2.65 2.25 0.28 0.05 1.18 5.6
K&W German 5.64 3.01 0.84 0.022 1.87 38.18
Facebook
Advocacy 5.57 3.68 0.48 0.01 1.51 46.48
Unresponsive 4.65 3.05 0.5 0.006 1.52 80.93
Note. The references for comparison: W&S - Watts and Strogatz (1998), K&W -
Kogut & Walker (2001); PL - Path length, CC-Clustering Coefficient
As seen in Table 12, both networks reveal similar path lengths to and greater
clustering coefficients than each respective random network, supporting the small-world
structure. In other words, the small-world network, like the scale-free network, is also a
universal structure of Facebook social networks rather than to be induced from the
instrumental communication.
3) Network Centralization: First, degree and betweenness centralization were
measured for the advocacy network and the unresponsive alters network. To compare
the centralization of the real Facebook networks to their respective random expectations,
100 random networks were generated with an equal size and density to each network.
139
Then, the degree and betweenness centralization values were calculated for each random
network (Appendix I). Random expectations are derived by averaging the values.
Table 17 shows the values of degree and betweenness centralization. The actual
centralization values were not very discrepant between the advocacy network and the
non-actors network: The values of degree centralization for the two real groups were
0.0419 and 0.0473 respectively, and the betweenness centralizations were 0.0957 and
0.0579. One the other hand, the values derived from random networks showed larger
discrepancies: The random expectation of degree centralization for the advocacy group
was 0.0096 and between centralization was 0.0117, while the random expectation of
degree centralization and betweenness centralization were notably smaller for the non-
group network, 0.0052 and 0.0012 respectively.
Consequently, the ratios of centralization of the advocacy network to its
respective random expectations turned out to be smaller than the ratios of the
unresponsive alters network to its random expectations. Specifically, the degree
centralization ratio for the advocacy network was 4.3649 compared to 9.0961 of the
unresponsive network. The betweenness centralization ratio was even more remarkably
different: For the advocacy network, it was 8.1795, while the ratio was 48.25 for the
unresponsive network.
140
Table 17. Degree and Betweenness Centralization: A Comparison
Degree Betweenness
Actual-to-
Random Ratio
Network Actual Random Actual Random D-ratio B-ratio
Advocacy Network 0.0419 0.0096 0.0957 0.0117 4.3649 8.1795
(Nodes =883, Edges = 4479)
Unresponsive Network 0.0473 0.0052 0.0579 0.0012 9.0961 48.25
(Nodes = 3087, Edges = 49561)
Note. D-ratio: Degree centralization ratio; B-ratio: Betweenness centralization ratio.
7.4. Conclusion and Discussion
This chapter explored structural characteristics of the Facebook social network,
particularly with a focus on the emerged community structure led by WOM-based
strategic communication. Based on the widely known network properties scale-free,
small-world, and network centralization the structure of the advocacy group mobilized
through the cyber-behavioral experiment was examined. The experiment was to motivate
people to join the advocacy group by spreading recommendation messages through
confederates ego-networks.
The first interesting finding is that the structure of the ego-network contributed to
the communication performance. While it is not surprising that the size of the ego-
network would affect the number of alters mobilized from the ego-network, it is a novel
finding that the structural characteristic additionally contributed to the confederates
mobilization performance. Specifically, confederates could draw more alters into the
advocacy group when their ego-networks were characterized as having a small-world
structure.
141
Another finding is that both scale-free and small-world structures were manifested
in the community that emerged. A scale-free model was the most obvious in that this
characteristic explained about 87 percent of the variance of degree distribution. The
small-world network also appeared to be valid, probably playing a role in the remaining
unaccounted variance. These findings suggest that, first, the network was formed by a
handful of leading actors who not only have many social connections but also are able to
exert social influence enough to change others attitudes or behaviors. Second, the
participation motivations are likely to be spread through the coherent friendship networks,
which are not segregated yet are connected through a few of actors bridging multiple
networks. By displaying scale-free and small-world structure, the advocacy network
shows the potential to be an effective communication system characterized as having
leadership (i.e. highly central actors), member coherence (i.e. strong local clustering), and
rapidly distributing general consensus (i.e. by connecting local clusters through small
numbers of message transmitters).
Both characteristics, however, turned out not to be the unique properties
contingent on the strategic efforts for social organizing. In contrast, the comparison of the
advocacy network to the network composed of the unresponsive alters revealed that the
scale-free and small-world are universally observed structures throughout general social
networking processes on Facebook. That is, the analysis of the scale-free network
resulted in a surprisingly similar pattern between the two. Regarding the small-world
structure as well, the examination of the actual-to-random ratios revealed that both the
advocacy and the unresponsive group have small-world tendencies, although the resulting
142
ratio for the clustering coefficient was smaller in the advocacy group than in the
unresponsive group.
The fact that Facebook social networks are generally characterized as both small-
world and scale-free is interpreted as both good and bad news for communication
strategists. The good news is that the structural advantages of Facebook can be easily
adapted regardless of ones expertise in strategic planning. The Facebook social network
can be a convenient communication channel to reach general audiences rapidly as well as
widely. On the other hand, it can be bad news that structural difference is hardly found
between the networks composed of conscious actors and of general audiences. This lack
of difference can raise doubts that special investment in Facebook social-organizing
would necessarily return better performance due to the limitation of forming structurally
better networks (for example, by remarkably reducing the communication pathways, or
by decentralizing the network while keeping cohesiveness).
Meanwhile, the strategic group and the unresponsive group showed differences in
centralization. When compared to random expectations, both degree and betweenness
centralization were revealed to be greater for the unresponsive than the strategically
emerged group. Particularly, the betweenness centralization of the unresponsive group
was far more intense than the advocacy network.
One explanation for the difference is the number of isolates. Considering that
isolates degree and betweenness centrality are zero, a larger number of isolates is
directly associated with a bigger gap between the maximum and the lowest centrality. If
this is the case, one can conclude that the purposively formed network shows higher
connectivity by including fewer numbers of isolates and showing lower network
143
centralization than general social networks on Facebook. High connectivity suggests that
the advocacy network in this study must have been constructed by the spread of social
influence among connected people. In other words, the WOM communication was at
work in the process of constructing the advocacy network. The high connectivity also
implies that the advocacy group has the potential to achieve a higher level of consensus
and better unification than general networks composed of indifferent people.
Another explanation, however, is that the difference of centralization could be
simply due to network size: Isolates are likely to be produced more as network size grows.
Even if each network was compared to its own random expectation, the higher likelihood
to include isolates in the unresponsive group, which includes three times more nodes than
the advocacy group, could affect the results of greater centralization. If this is the case, it
is possible to find no remarkable structural differences between the strategic social
organizing and the ordinary social networking in Facebook and lead to the discussion of
the double-edged sword above.
144
VII. CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSIONS
The current dissertation attempted to model social influence occurring in the Web
2.0 environment. Particularly, one of the most popular Web 2.0 services, Facebook, was
examined. While the majority of the preexisting CMC literature looks at the dynamics of
interpersonal and group communication by focusing on individual psychological factors,
this dissertation points out that an individuals online behaviors is not just governed by
intra-individual processing but also by social contextual factors. The influence of social
environments on shaping a persons thoughts, attitudes, or behaviors is conceptualized as
social influence.
Social and interpersonal influence has been a popular topic among
communication scholars. This dissertation adapted the influence literature developed in
offline-based organizational and strategic communication to delve into multifarious
influence mechanisms affecting online users attitudes and behaviors. Theorizing social
influence in the Web 2.0 context is a worthwhile task for applied communication studies
in that social influence is the fundamental process underlying e-WOM communication,
one of the most widely adopted interactive marketing and campaign strategies. Especially
along with the rise of social media, the WOM strategy is convenient not just for
commercial marketers but also for community organizers of social marketing, political
campaigns, activism, or non-profit fundraising.
Two important aspects of social influence have been studied: personal influence
and structural social influence. Personal influence was conceptualized as the influence
exerted by opinion leadership. Chapter 5 explored how individuals Facebook social
145
characteristics are associated with their opinion leadership. Structural social influence is
understood as social network effects. In chapter 6, I measured network structural
properties of each message recipient within the Facebook friendship community and
tested how the network properties contributed to a recipients subsequent behavior.
To theorize and empirically test social influence mechanisms, I conducted a
cyber-field behavioral experiment by having 128 confederates spread advocacy messages
to their Facebook friends. The expected behavior from the message recipients was to
support the advocated issue. The support could be expressed by joining the relevant
Facebook group. Accordingly, the collective consequence of recipients positive
responses to the message is the emergence of social organization that was strategically
formed. The project collected the data through a mixed method combining a conventional
survey, computer-generated personal network data and behavioral observation.
The summary of the findings are as follows: First, Chapter 4 examined the
characteristics of the Facebook influentials. The study found that the Facebook
influentials, at least in this project, were characterized as social connecters rather than
experts. Facebook influentials showed more active online community participation,
larger personal network size, and more heterogeneous personal network structure than
less influential others. The Facebook influentials identified in this project exerted
normative influence rather than informational influence, as seen by the lack of significant
findings associated with the knowledge-based opinion leadership. The study contributed
methodologically to the development of Web 2.0 opinion leadership literature by
comparing two different opinion leadership measures and by applying a social network
analytic technique to measure social attributes, particularly cosmopoliteness.
146
The findings in this project, however, are preliminary due to the possibility of bias
induced from the experimental design. To elaborate, the advocated object in this project
was to mobilize collective behaviors for common good rather than to make an adoption
decision for an individuals own sake. The intended behavioral response was also an
easy and straightforward kind, which was simply joining the group. Behavioral
compliance can be a qualitatively different issue from attitudinal change. Given that
opinion leadership is more about influencing thoughts and attitudes, rather than
behavioral change, a stronger presence of normative influence than informational
influence could be due to the issue contextualized in this project. To ensure the external
validity of the results, future research needs to be conducted in other topical contexts.
Chapter 5 examined the structural aspect of Facebook social influence.
Considering SNS-specific context, I devised the typology of structural influence
mechanisms. Classical social influence models developed in organizational studies,
including SIP and the social contagion model, were adapted to categorize sub-
mechanisms. Three different sub-mechanisms were identified: direct recommendation,
social contagion, and network embeddedness. The results found that direct contact by
multiple message senders increased the likelihood of a recipients compliance to the
message by becoming a member of the group. This direct recommendation effect turned
out to be greater among those who are less integrated with others in personal
communities. On the other hand, the social contagion effect was revealed to be even
larger than the direct contact effect. Stated differently, a message recipient was more
likely to join the group if the recipient perceived that his or her friends are also group
members. The visibility of indirectly acquired social information is a distinctive
147
characteristic of SNS in comparison to traditional forms of CMC. The contagion effect
was revealed to be particularly large when a recipient was deeply embedded within the
community. The findings showed that direct contact complemented the social influence
process for those who were superficially embedded, while the contagion effect was
synergized among those who were deeply embedded within Facebook networks.
SNS social networks and structural social influence theory can supplement each
other. Considering that the paucity of literature on structural social influence is partly due
to the rarity of complete structural data, online social network data is relatively easily
accessible from SNS and thus can be effectively utilized by the influence scholars. At the
same time, SNS scholarship examining social influence needs to pay attention to the
structural context where social influence occurs because interpersonal visibility through
social networks is more salient than any other communication modes. Theories of
structural social influence lay the groundwork to explain the influence phenomena
occurring in SNS.
Chapter 7 is not directly related to social influence process occurring on an
individual or interpersonal level. Instead, it implies that the micro-level of social
influence process in SNS can result in organizational behaviors as a collective
consequence. The macro-structures were examined as to whether any systematic
structural pattern is observed in the emergent communication network through Facebook
direct recommendations and social contagion. The test of two well-known network
properties scale-free, and small-world revealed that, while both structures
characterized the emergent communication network, they were not uniquely contingent
on the advocacy community that was formed strategically but universally presented in
148
general social networks in Facebook. Centralization analysis, on the other hand, showed
that the community built through the WOM included fewer disconnected nodes (or
isolates) than the generic social network, implying that a strategically emerged
community has the potential to form a cohesive network through which general
consensus is more easily attained than a naturally-occurring community without any
involvement of changing agents. The results are tentative, though, requesting future
studies in different contexts.
Monge (1987) emphasizes that human communication processes are closely
related with the structure of social relationships. Although seeming to be a stable
environment in which communication activities are exchanged, structure is changing
constantly as well. In other words, communication structure evolves (Monge &
Contractor, 2003). Examining the emergent network structure helps assess the
communication process within the community or organization, such as the speed, breadth
and diversity of information flow, quality of group performance and the emergence of
leadership.
Given that the evolution of communication networks from formation to
disbandment (or termination of activities although the space still exists) is prevalently
observed in an expedited way in Web 2.0., structural analysis can benefit communication
practitioners who try to incorporate the online community as a part of communication
strategies. It is a preliminary stage, however, for communication scholars to visualize and
characterize the system-level of network properties. An important question still remains
unanswered: How would each structural property be strategically advantageous in
different kinds of communication context? More empirical investigations need to be
149
made in various situations to build up the theory that foresees the impacts of macro-
structural characteristics of Web 2.0-based community on communication performances.
The project is not free from limitations. By pointing out limitations, I propose
some future research directions. As mentioned above, the first issue is the simplicity of
the intended behavioral outcome. The influence mechanisms become more complex and
dynamic when the issue at hand is more complex and urgent as a personal matter. More
complex real life cases are abundant. For example, a researcher can examine the spread
of health care information. The subsequent questions can be: How does health care
information (e.g. drug information) spread over Facebook social networks? Does the
spread of information affect a users health-related attitude or behavior (e.g. preference
for or adoption of a particular drug product)? If so, whose information provision is more
influential? Which network position is more susceptible to the informational or normative
influence? How does the word-of-mouth process affect the message recipients judgment
whether the information is correct or misleading? Besides health care, prevalent social
organizing practices for emergency response, election campaigns, collective political
action, and charity fundraising might also be examined based on the theories and methods
utilized in this dissertation.
The second important limitation is that the project disregarded the longitudinal
aspect when analyzing social contagion. Personal network exposure (PNE), the parameter
for the contagion effect, is defined as the proportion of alters who have already adopted
before an individual made a decision (Valente, 1995). Accordingly, PNE is supposed to
be measured in consideration of time period. Unfortunately, the current dataset does not
include information about the time of enactment for each individual. Alternatively, PNE
150
is measured by simply counting the proportion of adopters within a personal network by
the time the data collection was finished. This approach can lead to a misunderstanding
of the contagion process because it is possible that the direction of influence give-and-
take is reversed. Instead, a person of interest was influenced by the exposure to his or her
friends behavior, and the persons behavior could have exerted influence on his or her
friends behavior. Consideration of the temporal aspect will increase the validity of the
existence of social contagion effects.
Another limitation can be pointed out in that the study is the consideration of the
dichotomized relational aspect, whether two are linked to each other as a friend in
Facebook or not. As mentioned earlier, our personal community consists of multifarious
relational types, ranging from intimate relationships to those latently tied, to those who
are not even activated yet as relationships. Network scholars term the quality of
relationship as tie strength. As one of the indicators of network cohesion (Burt, 1987;
Meyer, 1994), tie strengths are likely to convey different levels of interpersonal influence.
While this study could not capture the quality aspect of Facebook social interactions,
Easley and Kleinberg (2010) say that one benefit of using online social networks as data
for analysis is the availability of objective information about the amount of social
interactions. Specifically, log-files can be used as a good start to explore the history of
interactions, the level of intimacy, and communication frequencies that an ego has with
alters identified in the egocentric network. Using log-files is also advantageous in that it
not only lessens egos burden to report the interactional natures about each of ego-alter
and alter-alter relationships but also minimize the perceptual error that might arise due
to the egos misperception or incorrect memory.
151
Lastly, future studies can take a closer look at the evolutionary process of the
Faccebook group. A preliminary analysis found that the mobilization process follows the
recently highlighted diffusion pattern of the r-shape curve (Barnett, et al., in press;
Danowski, et al., in press). This curve indicates that the critical mass is reached in an
increasingly rapid speed, implying that a great amount of related messages are produced
simultaneously and the adoption behavior occurs with the minimal level of cognitive
learning process. Such a pattern is characteristically observed in many ICT-based
diffusion processes. It will be an interesting topic of inquiry what kind of factors drive
such mobilization or diffusion process. Possible factors are the network exposure level
within interpersonal communication networks, the crowd behavior motivated by
perceiving the increased group popularity, or the organizational credibility checked by
observing quality group activities and social interactions. Also, by longitudinally tracking
relational chains of who was influenced by whom, future studies can integrate the
evolutionary perspective into the exploration of the social influence process on Facebook.
Communication technologies have been aggressively adopted for strategic
communicators. Both commercial and non-commercial sectors can take advantage of
technology-mediated communication to achieve instrumental goals. The online social
network flourishing in Web 2.0 services is being said to have potential to facilitate the
WOM process. It is timely to theorize Web 2.0 interpersonal and social influence
mechanisms to understand the effectiveness of WOM-based communication. While the
current project adopted a structural approach to personal influence and social network
influence, inquiries on the effect of individual attributes, particularly the message
152
recipients and the message valence might also be integrated into the full story of the
Web 2.0 influence.
153
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APPENDIX I. Simulation Results of Centralization for Random Networks
Network Centralization for Generated
Random Networks (Nnodes =885,
Nedges = 4479
Network Centralization for
Generated Random Networks
(Nnodes = 3087, Nedges = 49561)
Between Closeness Degeree Between Closeness Degeree
1 0.0113 0.0302 0.0079 1 0.0012 0.0561 0.0045
2 0.0106 0.0275 0.0090 2 0.0013 0.0636 0.0048
3 0.0099 0.0246 0.0101 3 0.0011 0.0602 0.0052
4 0.0101 0.0286 0.0079 4 0.0012 0.0659 0.0045
5 0.0135 0.0287 0.0090 5 0.0014 0.0622 0.0065
6 0.0152 0.0295 0.0079 6 0.0012 0.0628 0.0048
7 0.0094 0.0358 0.0079 7 0.0014 0.0585 0.0052
8 0.0107 0.0372 0.0113 8 0.0012 0.0536 0.0052
9 0.0114 0.0190 0.0090 9 0.0012 0.0724 0.0048
10 0.0119 0.0367 0.0090 10 0.0014 0.0695 0.0045
11 0.0150 0.0580 0.0090 11 0.0014 0.0612 0.0058
12 0.0100 0.0230 0.0101 12 0.0014 0.0582 0.0052
13 0.0111 0.0461 0.0101 13 0.0013 0.0582 0.0045
14 0.0165 0.0535 0.0101 14 0.0013 0.0652 0.0061
15 0.0126 0.1123 0.0090 15 0.0014 0.0674 0.0048
16 0.0095 0.0225 0.0079 16 0.0011 0.0623 0.0052
17 0.0110 0.0238 0.0101 17 0.0014 0.0581 0.0048
18 0.0133 0.0188 0.0090 18 0.0013 0.0662 0.0052
19 0.0107 0.0448 0.0090 19 0.001 0.0601 0.0052
20 0.0130 0.0495 0.0090 20 0.0012 0.0595 0.0048
21 0.0129 0.0742 0.0101 21 0.0013 0.056 0.0052
22 0.0118 0.0296 0.0079 22 0.0011 0.0593 0.0052
23 0.0115 0.0275 0.0135 23 0.0012 0.0586 0.0052
24 0.0107 0.0274 0.0101 24 0.0014 0.062 0.0058
25 0.0105 0.0340 0.0090 25 0.0012 0.0639 0.0048
26 0.0102 0.0254 0.0113 26 0.0013 0.0601 0.0052
27 0.0105 0.0264 0.0090 27 0.0013 0.0655 0.0055
28 0.0094 0.0355 0.0090 28 0.0016 0.0681 0.0048
29 0.0093 0.0442 0.0124 29 0.0012 0.0665 0.0052
30 0.0119 0.0748 0.0101 30 0.0013 0.0601 0.0061
31 0.0164 0.0311 0.0113 31 0.0011 0.0618 0.0055
32 0.0122 0.0251 0.0090 32 0.0009 0.054 0.0048
33 0.0128 0.0226 0.0101 33 0.0013 0.0564 0.0045
178
34 0.0109 0.0408 0.0124 34 0.0013 0.0583 0.0055
35 0.0098 0.0286 0.0113 35 0.0012 0.0631 0.0055
36 0.0115 0.0274 0.0090 36 0.001 0.0564 0.0048
37 0.0092 0.0362 0.0090 37 0.0012 0.0567 0.0048
38 0.0156 0.0178 0.0135 38 0.0012 0.0624 0.0052
39 0.0107 0.0264 0.0101 39 0.0011 0.0636 0.0048
40 0.0132 0.0726 0.0113 40 0.0011 0.0575 0.0048
41 0.0132 0.0451 0.0101 41 0.0013 0.0616 0.0048
42 0.0095 0.0218 0.0113 42 0.0014 0.0602 0.0055
43 0.0125 0.0240 0.0135 43 0.001 0.0673 0.0048
44 0.0110 0.0235 0.0090 44 0.001 0.0562 0.0048
45 0.0117 0.0406 0.0090 45 0.0012 0.0599 0.0052
46 0.0098 0.0479 0.0079 46 0.0012 0.0571 0.0048
47 0.0208 0.0251 0.0135 47 0.001 0.0559 0.0052
48 0.0097 0.0440 0.0090 48 0.0013 0.0554 0.0052
49 0.0124 0.0428 0.0090 49 0.0012 0.0646 0.0052
50 0.0099 0.0496 0.0079 50 0.0014 0.0623 0.0048
51 0.0118 0.0329 0.0101 51 0.0012 0.0631 0.0052
52 0.0088 0.0488 0.0113 52 0.001 0.0563 0.0042
53 0.0165 0.0183 0.0090 53 0.001 0.0622 0.0058
54 0.0141 0.0237 0.0090 54 0.0011 0.058 0.0058
55 0.0100 0.0232 0.0079 55 0.0013 0.061 0.0052
56 0.0110 0.0343 0.0124 56 0.0012 0.0595 0.0058
57 0.0121 0.0295 0.0090 57 0.0013 0.0594 0.0052
58 0.0122 0.0341 0.0113 58 0.0012 0.0616 0.0055
59 0.0096 0.0371 0.0101 59 0.0015 0.072 0.0058
60 0.0124 0.0442 0.0090 60 0.0012 0.0578 0.0052
61 0.0118 0.0501 0.0090 61 0.0013 0.062 0.0068
62 0.0172 0.0658 0.0090 62 0.0012 0.0669 0.0068
63 0.0096 0.0892 0.0090 63 0.0014 0.0612 0.0058
64 0.0104 0.0132 0.0101 64 0.0012 0.0655 0.0048
65 0.0114 0.0739 0.0090 65 0.0015 0.0623 0.0061
66 0.0130 0.0324 0.0090 66 0.0016 0.0615 0.0061
67 0.0094 0.0282 0.0090 67 0.0012 0.0611 0.0048
68 0.0099 0.0258 0.0090 68 0.0014 0.0595 0.0052
69 0.0155 0.0377 0.0101 69 0.0013 0.0582 0.0048
70 0.0093 0.0616 0.0079 70 0.0013 0.0707 0.0052
71 0.0139 0.0211 0.0113 71 0.0011 0.064 0.0055
72 0.0128 0.0270 0.0090 72 0.0011 0.0595 0.0061
179
73 0.0103 0.0341 0.0090 73 0.0011 0.0558 0.0045
74 0.0102 0.0431 0.0079 74 0.0011 0.0625 0.0058
75 0.0115 0.0503 0.0090 75 0.0011 0.0631 0.0048
76 0.0112 0.0415 0.0090 76 0.0018 0.0562 0.0052
77 0.0092 0.0275 0.0079 77 0.0015 0.0662 0.0055
78 0.0108 0.0393 0.0101 78 0.0011 0.0588 0.0048
79 0.0102 0.0214 0.0090 79 0.0011 0.0674 0.0048
80 0.0120 0.0389 0.0079 80 0.0013 0.0644 0.0065
81 0.0105 0.0375 0.0101 81 0.0013 0.0663 0.0048
82 0.0134 0.0299 0.0079 82 0.0011 0.0652 0.0052
83 0.0125 0.0186 0.0135 83 0.0011 0.0586 0.0052
84 0.0162 0.0429 0.0090 84 0.0015 0.0698 0.0048
85 0.0098 0.0221 0.0113 85 0.0012 0.0592 0.0052
86 0.0123 0.0168 0.0090 86 0.0016 0.0701 0.0048
87 0.0107 0.0217 0.0090 87 0.001 0.0613 0.0052
88 0.0108 0.0815 0.0090 88 0.0012 0.0625 0.0052
89 0.0127 0.0545 0.0090 89 0.0011 0.0555 0.0048
90 0.0099 0.0446 0.0090 90 0.0012 0.0618 0.0052
91 0.0143 0.0295 0.0101 91 0.0012 0.0615 0.0052
92 0.0095 0.0320 0.0101 92 0.0014 0.0635 0.0052
93 0.0096 0.0343 0.0079 93 0.001 0.0584 0.0058
94 0.0110 0.0205 0.0079 94 0.0011 0.0619 0.0052
95 0.0128 0.0399 0.0090 95 0.0015 0.0603 0.0048
96 0.0107 0.0793 0.0113 96 0.0011 0.0615 0.0045
97 0.0123 0.0515 0.0090 97 0.0014 0.0604 0.0055
98 0.0145 0.0393 0.0101 98 0.0014 0.0612 0.0058
99 0.0106 0.0346 0.0079 99 0.0012 0.0577 0.0048
100 0.0102 0.1036 0.0101 100 0.0015 0.0678 0.0055
Avg. 0.0117 0.0382 0.0096 Avg. 0.0012 0.0615 0.0052
Real 0.0957 0.0019 0.0419 Real 0.0579 0.0008 0.0473
Ratio 8.1795 0.0500 4.3646 Ratio 48.2500 0.0130 9.0961