Social Networks and Communities

Abstract

The concept of community has been used in social sciences to describe several types of relatively stable relations among individuals, in a variety of contexts, from small rural villages to metropolitan and multicultural cities and for different forms of interaction from economic exchanges to leisure and political expression. Emerging outcomes of communitarian relations such as cohesion and cooperation, exchange of resources and communication efficiency have fostered and stimulated theory advancements and investigation of these relational contexts. The following chapter focuses on the concept of community in social network studies and describes the main theoretical approaches and research strategies adopted by network analysts to study social groupings. The review surveys classical network studies and the theoretical debate that involved the concept of community during the last century, exploring the perspective of contemporary research on communities. The theoretical implications of the study of communitarian relations and social participation will be addressed describing main community detection strategies and the debate on social capital. The third section of the chapter depicts network studies that deal with the social impact of new forms of societal communication and special types of communities in the virtual world. In the conclusions, the text outlines the challenges that social research on virtual and natural communities is expected to face in the next decade. The complete list of references is provided at the end of the chapter.