Worth the Weight: Conceptualizing and Measuring Strong Versus Weak Tie Homophily.

ABSTRACT: Homophily, or the tendency for social contact to occur among those who are similar, plays a crucial role in structuring our social networks. Most previous work considers whether homophily shapes the patterns of all social ties, regardless of their frequency of interaction or level of intimacy. As complex network data become increasingly available, however, researchers need to evaluate whether homophily operates differently for ties defined by strong versus weak measures of strength. Here, I take this approach by first defining two variants of homophily: (1) strong tie homophily, or the tendency for ties with high measures of strength to cluster together similar peers, and (2) weak tie homophily, or the tendency for ties with low edge weights to connect same-attribute actors.

SUBMITTER: McMillan C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8294076 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature