Social Routing diagrams

You can classify an interaction based on the type of tie and the type of benefit.

I think there’s a lot to learn from social interactions.

I am writing an article on Social Routing and am developing some diagrams to show different aspects of it.

In general networking Routing is is the way that things find paths through a network. So Social Routing refers to the paths in which information, support and such flow through a Social Network. It affects how resources and wealth are distributed.

The diagram titled “Social Route Types” is a way of classifying a flow through the network based on the type of tie that it travels through and the benefit to the nodes or actors in the network.

For example, if you come in contact with a person who is looking for a job and you give them information about an opportunity in your office, that could be classified in different ways. For example, if the person is your brother, the information transfer is based on Kinship. If they are a friend, it may be Cronyism. If you are giving money or support and it is to people you don’t know and also there is no direct benefit to you, it could be an example of Altruism or Civic type behavior. If you are collecting money to send to your home town, it may be based on Kinship or Communal interests.

A table to open discussion about people policy surrounding different types of information flow in their immediate network.

Another way of looking at Social Routing is to look at an individual’s policies on what types of flow they will encourage of discourage in their immediate network.

The Social Routing Table at the right is to help to illustrate person A’s policies on how they facilitate or block the flow of communication, information or support (or whatever is flowing in their network).

For instance if you imagine that you are person A in the diagram. If you give a spare movie ticket to person B, then this is a positive transaction AB+.

If you tell B that C is not to be trusted, then this is a BC- transaction. Your transaction may reduce the BC tie. Some people may do this as a tactic to increase the strength of tie AB or AC. Most people would find this to be negative or destructive behavior if it is unwarranted. There will be examples where this is an AB+ transaction if it is a warranted warning.

The diagram also has D which is a friend of a friend. E which is a friend that does not exist yet. An example of AE+ transaction would be something like the following. Example: You come up to someone at wine and cheese and introduce yourself.

Person F represents friends of people you don’t yet know. A shy person would avoid an AE transaction. Sitting in the corner of a dance venue away from the dance floor, bar and traffic areas would be an AE- behavior.

The table at the right suggests that an individual may have a profile of how they treat information. A socially open person may permit positive transactions in every combination (may even resist negative transactions across the board as well).

A manipulative person may avoid certain combinations or permit or facilitate certain negative transactions.

I believe you can come up with a profile of an individual.

Challenge: The people in the Social Routing Table are labeled A, B, C, D, E and F. Ties and information flow can be represented by two letters and a plus or minus indicating if its positive or negative. Can you come up with a better way to name these different actors in the sample network in the diagram?

A better diagram? Using a different naming for the people, it is easier to refer to the ties.

Here is a response to the challenge above. I renamed the people (nodes) to be more intuitive. S, F, C, P for Self, Friend, Common and Potential. The other two I just added one letter since there is no good single letter name for a Friend’s Friend or a Potential Friend’s Friend.

I also noticed that the routing table at the right had 4 extra rows in it because of duplication.

The only question I have left is if there are any other patterns that should be in the diagram and routing table. I’m thinking about Friend’s Potential Friend.

What do you think?

Tags: analysis, control, manipulation, policy, routing, social, social network