In lecture we began talking about power in networks and the characteristics of nodes that might lead to power. Dependence, exclusion, satiation, and betweenness were all cited as being typical traits of powerful nodes. The research that identified these traits was based on experiments in which humans bargained over money, with the most powerful nodes being the ones who emerged with the greatest earnings. Many cases discussed in Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point,” however, involve the social network which transmits ideas and fads, where power isn’t necessarily the ability to bargain for the best deal - it’s the ability to influence other peoples’ opinions.

Gladwell characterizes powerful nodes as Mavens, Connectors, and Salesman. In the terms of our lecture, mavens exercise the power of dependence: others are dependent on their expertise for making informed decisions. Connectors’ power is drawn from their betweenness in that they have many contacts and are able to bridge people far across the network. A salesman’s ability to spread his ideas and opinions to others doesn’t really fall under any of the categories we discussed in lecture, but could be classified as the power of persuasion. Its not really power due to a certain position in the network, rather it is due to personal traits. Given an influential position in the network, a salesman could have the ability to sell an idea to the connectors and mavens who could bring it to the rest of the network.

One interesting phenomenon that Gladwell talks about is the dependence of social networks on context. Chapters 4 and 5 both talk about how a message’s effectiveness is dependent upon the context it is transmitted in. For example, in an effort to reduce crime in New York City’s subway system the Transportation Department spent millions of dollars removing graffiti from the trains. This is counterintuitive given the model of power in networks that we have discussed - a more natural idea would be to target the most prominent criminals (powerful nodes) with the idea that by stopping them you would send a message to other, less powerful, offenders. As it turned out, the subtle change in the environment caused by cleaning up the cars sent a very powerful message to subway riders and crime dropped immensely, even throughout the city. I think these environmental factors are an important part of social network analysis, but they are probably difficult to model. Still, I think its something to consider as we continue our discussion on power.

Gladwell’s book talks about power in terms of mavens, connectors, salesman and context; we talked about it in terms of dependence, exclusion, and other characteristics. I think Gladwell’s model is a useful complement to the model we discussed in class for analyzing the division of power in networks.