San Antonio College Library

The swift spread of social network concepts and their applications and the rising use of network analysis in social science has necessitated an overview of this field. This book explains the big ideas that underlie the social network phenomenon. It covers fundamental concepts, then discusses networks and their core themes in increasing order of complexity. The author demystifies the concepts, theories, and findings developed by network experts. He...

Social networks and online communities are reshaping the way people communicate, both in their personal and professional lives. What makes some succeed and others fail? What draws a user in? What makes them join? What keeps them coming back? Entrepreneurs and businesses are turning to user experience practitioners to figure this out. Though they are well-equipped to evaluate and create a variety of interfaces, social networks require a different set...

"This book focuses on how everyday media such as Facebook, iTunes and Google can be understood in new ways for the 21st century through ideas of convergence. Key chapters explore the development of the internet, the rise of social media and the new opportunities for audiences to create, collaborate upon and share their own media."--Publisher's website.

"The Hidden Power of Social Networks offers the an application of social network analysis - a technique that reveals who is connected to whom in large, distributed groups - to the work of managers and leaders. The book outlines a host of specific and inexpensive actions at the individual, group, and organizational levels that can help promote vibrant employee networks."--Jacket.

Challenges conventional wisdom about terrorism, arguing that the key to mounting an effective defense against future attacks from Islamist fanatics is a thorough understanding of the networks that allow terrorist operations to proliferate.

If all politics are local, then so is almost everything else, argues sociologist Gary Alan Fine. We organize our lives by relying on those closest to us--family members, friends, work colleagues, team mates, and other intimates--to create meaning and order. In this thoughtful and wide-ranging book, Fine argues that the basic building blocks of society itself are forged within the boundaries of such small groups, the "tiny publics" necessary for a...

"Through network diagrams and sustained narrative, Randall Collins traces the development of philosophical thought in China, Japan, India, ancient Greece, the medieval Islamic and Jewish world, medieval Christendom, and modern Europe. What emerges from this history is a general theory of intellectual life, one that avoids both the reduction of ideas to the influences of society at large and the purely contingent local construction of meanings. Instead,...

Andrews writes about the widespread misuse of our personal online data and creates a Constitution for the web. Social networks are the defining cultural movement of our time. An ordinary individual can be a reporter, alerting the world to breaking news of a natural disaster or a political crisis. A layperson can be a scientist, participating in a crowd sourced research project or an investigator, helping cops solve a crime. But as we work and chat...

"In Electronic Tribes, the authors of sixteen competitively selected essays provide an up-to-the-minute look at the social uses and occasional abuses of online communication in the new media era. They explore many current Internet subcultures, including MySpace.com, craftster.org, massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) such as World of Warcraft, music downloading, white supremacist and other counterculture groups, and Nigerian email...

Computers were first conceived as "thinking machines," but in the twenty-first century they have become social machines, online places where people meet friends, play games, and collaborate on projects. In this book, Judith Donath argues persuasively that for social media to become truly sociable media, we must design interfaces that reflect how we understand and respond to the social world. People and their actions are still harder to perceive online...