Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Communication and other →  social networks have been the subject of considerable scholarship since the eighteenth century ( Mattelart 2000 ), but the past two decades have produced unprecedented growth in network theorizing and research. Further, this interest in communication and information networks now spans the social sciences, including sociology, psychology, history, political science, organization science, and economics, as well as the physical and life sciences. As Castells (2000) has so comprehensively elucidated, we are now living in the age of the network society. Networks, in general, are structural configurations that emerge when sets of relations are applied to sets of entities. Entitles are typically called “nodes,” points, or elements, and relations are called “links” or ties. “Communication networks” reflect patterns based on message and information flow relations among the elements of the network, thereby creating the information infrastructure on which all organizations and societies depend. Network configurations that occur across a large number of organizations are called “network forms,” and organizations that share a common network form are viewed as “populations.” Historically, →  Organizational Communication focused almost exclusively on nodes defined as people who were members of specific organizations. Today, a much broader view of networks envisions ... log in or subscribe to read full text