Doctoral Degrees (Information Science)

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Browsing Doctoral Degrees (Information Science) by Author "Cornelissen, Laurenz Aldu"

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    Social network cognition : an empirical investigation of network accuracy and social position
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2019-04) Cornelissen, Laurenz Aldu; Watson, B. W.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Information Science.
    ENGLISH SUMMARY : The navigation of social relations is a central part of human life. In 1998, Robin Dunbar proposed the social brain hypothesis: brain size, particularly the neocortex, is directly related to the size and complexity of social networks of the species. This is due to the computational complexity needed for memorising relationships, and social skills necessary to manage those relationships. There is a key research field attempting to deal with questions around understanding social networks. Embedded in a structuralist agenda, social network analysis (SNA) offers theory, concepts, mechanisms, and tools to investigate social networks. A particular subset of the field investigates how individuals encode and perceive social networks. The realisation that humans are surprisingly inaccurate about social relations around them, prompted scholars to investigate why. If understanding social environments is such an important part of human life, why do researchers observe such inaccurate perceptions. The question led to investigations into the causes of individual misperceptions of social relations, and the consequences of such distorted perceptions. In other words, what causes people to misperceive crucial social relations, and what are the effects of differentiations of perceptions for individuals and groups? Prior work has mostly focussed on organisational contexts, which offers natural boundaries for social networks, as well as individual and group motivations for the functioning of the networks. Evidently, some individuals are more accurate than most, and a natural direction is to investigate why, and what the consequences are for these individuals. The literature employs a key assumption, which up to this point has been unchallenged. Inherited from the structuralist agenda, it has assumed that accuracy about the social network is the result of an individual’s social position. The network structure offers the opportunities and constraints for the individual, and thus results in increased awareness of social relations from an advantageous social position. The assumption is challenged in this thesis through highlighting evidence from a logical inconsistency between empirical findings and the proposed theoretical framework. Prior research proposes that individuals are accurate due to their position exposing them to information about social relations, a classical structuralist stance. Yet, when individuals in a formalised social position (such as organisational rank) are consistently observed to have lower acuity, the theoretical explanation cites motivation as antecedent, thus introducing agency into a structuralist theory. Proposing agency as an ad-hoc explanation for this finding does not offer a coherent theoretical framework. This, therefore, prompts a need for developing a more coherent theoretical framework from which to interpret the empirical findings, and guide future research. The pure structuralist theory for social acuity is thus challenged through a critical analysis of current literature and empirical findings. Three hypotheses are developed which is tested with new and prior data. Using non-parametric tests, the hypotheses are substantiated, which prompts an elaboration of the thesis to develop a formalisation of theoretical frameworks. The implicit assumptions of prior work are formalised under exposure theory, which stands as a structuralist approach to social network cognition. Subsequently, a formalisation of the thesis is developed into networking theory, which is a contextualisation of structuration theory. The thesis then draws increasingly broader conclusions for future research, and opens key questions about the role of cognition of social networks in a modern environment characterised by broad access to internet and social media platforms, enabling us to establish networks beyond our original capacity, as set by Dunbar.