Social Networks and Computer Mediated Communication

Abstract

This chapter examines social networks in the Portuguese society, and the impact of these social networks on organizations regarding Computer-Mediated Communication. The results describe a Portuguese case study and attempt to answer the following question: How does Computer-Mediated Communication contribute to social networking in organizations? This chapter examines the emails and phone calls exchanged during the year 2008 by employees working for a Portuguese bank in order to identify nodes, roles, positions, types of relations, types of networks and centrality measures. Overall there were 93.654 internal calls and 542.674 emails exchanged between the actors. The findings suggest that emailing is the preferred means of communication, although frequency increases with hierarchy communication. Collaborative work between departments functions as the emergence of a network. The results confirm the relevance of computer networks to support social networks in organizations, and its potential concerning data analysis outside the traditional surveys, and the possibility of introducing Internet sources.