introduction

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1 Introduction

I could not spend as much time on it as I wished, so this weekend I’ll have time to improve the introduction.

The rise of the Internet, like on many aspects in life, has had an influence on social networks (licoppe_are_5?). Especially social media has altered networks, as it provides opportunities to activate latent ties and strengthen weak ties (Haythornthwaite, 2002); more recent source). Furthermore, the selection and influence within networks has changed. Literature on mate-selection shows that when using the Internet to find a partner, individuals tend to select partners that show more similarity when compared to couples that selected each other in offline settings (Carter & Buckwalter, 2009). Also within online friendship relations, a high level of homophily is visible (Aiello et al., 2012).

However, less is known about the influence of social media on networks of scientists. Increased opportunities to communicate online may have created new collaborations between co-authors. It is interesting to investigate whether these collaborations show a high level of homophily as we would expect following the literature on mate- and friendship selection. Simultaneously, these novel options to find co-authors online, may have resulted in a less dense network as a result of often selecting new co-authors to collaborate with. This may create differences in network structure between scientists that are active online and scientists who are not. In the current paper, I would like to investigate the following research question: How does being active on social media impact collaborations in social networks of scientists?

An answer to this question is both relevant to society and to science. The evolution of social networks is not only relevant to the individuals within that network, but is also a signifier of cohesion (SOURCE) and inequality (Karimi et al., 2018). Since individuals are embedded in networks, the decisions these individuals make within these networks will also affect the societal level (EXPLAIN MORE CLEARLY). In this case, investigating how social media participation has an influence on selecting collaborators within one network of scientists, could be translated into the influence of social media on networks in general. Possibly, selection mechanisms have changed as a consequence of social media and therefore it has an influence on cohesion. The current paper will also add to the literature by applying a social network perspective. Performing a social network analysis is of added value, as it can reveal precisely how selection in social networks may alter as a consequence of social media. This reveals to a deeper extent which mechanisms underlie the influence of internet on cohesion.

2 References

Aiello, L. M., Barrat, A., Schifanella, R., Cattuto, C., Markines, B., & Menczer, F. (2012). Friendship prediction and homophily in social media. ACM Transactions on the Web, 6(2), 9:1-9:33. https://doi.org/10.1145/2180861.2180866 Carter, S. R., & Buckwalter, J. G. (2009). Enhancing Mate Selection through the Internet: A Comparison of Relationship Quality between Marriages arising from an Online Matchmaking System and Marriages arising from Unfettered Selection. Interpersona: An International Journal on Personal Relationships, Extra 3, 105–125. Hall, N. (2014). The Kardashian index: A measure of discrepant social media profile for scientists. Genome Biology, 15(7), 424. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-014-0424-0 Haythornthwaite, C. (2002). Strong, Weak, and Latent Ties and the Impact of New Media. The Information Society, 18(5), 385–401. https://doi.org/10.1080/01972240290108195 Karimi, F., Génois, M.,Wagner, C., Singer, P., & Strohmaier, M. (2018). Homophily influences ranking of minorities in social networks. Scientific Reports, 8(1), 11077. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-29405-7 Licoppe, C., &Smoreda, Z. (2005). Are social networks technologically embedded?: How networks are changing today with changes in communication technology. Social Networks, 27(4), 317–335. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2004.11.001