Social and Communication Networks
The research programme “Social and Communication Networks” investigates the networked world from a social science perspective. Theory and methodology embodied in social network analysis provide a useful framework to explain the nature, strength, and dynamics of interpersonal, intra-organizational and cross-organizational relationships. This helps us to understand how leadership, trust, knowledge sharing, innovation, cooperation and conflict evolve as network phenomena within and between organizations.
The world-wide growth of communication capabilities strongly influences how mass media, including newspapers, radio, television, as well as the many new electronic forms of publication and communication, interact with and impact upon their audiences, and vice versa. Content analysis of communication messages clarifies the cognitive networks of actors and stakeholders involved in communication and dialogue. This sheds light, for example, on how public debate, journalism and politics function in the Information Society, and on how trust develops in online social communities such as those on the Web.