Keywords: Diffusion; Translation; Complex networks; Meaning; Scientific communities.

Author Petter Törnberg on the article: 

Adoption and adaptation: A computational case study of the spread of Granovetter's weak ties hypothesis

The question of how new scientific ideas spread has been an important topic of research for decades, examined through various methods and approaches. The question was in particular vogue during the 1960s and 1970s – a period which laid important groundwork to the understanding of the spread of scientific ideas. The work of this period highlighted the role of interpretation and communities in science. Academics were found to be organized in informal communities, which perform pivotal functions in the diffusion and development of ideas, especially in relation to the interpretation of scientific ideas. Scientific communities developed vocabularies and narratives through which their members would make sense of scientific findings for their own work (Fisher, 1987). This interpretation was often carried to important extent by star researchers around which the communities were centered, who functioned as intellectual leaders and representatives to the broader scientific world (Collins, 1983, Crane, 1972). Science studies of the 1960s and 1970s thus contributed important insights in the central role of how researchers adapt scientific ideas as they interpret and put them to use in a particular research context and community.

Since the 2000s, the field of science studies has again seen a surge of interest, reinvigorated by an explosion in the availability of both data and sophisticated analytical techniques. Using citation networks and large datasets, this period research has showed the role of networks and structural aspects in shaping the dynamics of the spread of new scientific ideas. These studies often come from the key premise that science is a complex system in which interactions on a microscopic level result in non-linear dynamics which result in the emergence of unexpected macroscopic patterns.

The computational analyses thus tend to fit their research questions and perspectives to their method, focusing on the structural properties of scientific networks, while leaving out the interpretive aspects that were the focus of previous generations. This means that the understanding of the spread of scientific ideas has moved from an emphasis on scientific communities, leaders, and their active and continuous (re-)interpretation of scientific ideas, to what Latour (1984) calls a “diffusion model” of science – in which researchers are passive nodes in a network through which ideas circulate, and the focus is the complex process through which researchers adopt scientific ideas.

In this paper, we seek to bridge the computational and interpretive approaches, taking what Latour (1984) refers to as a “translation model” of science: we view diffusion as a complex process in which researchers shape and reinterpret the spreading idea, resulting in a continuous transformation of the diffusant. This suggests that interpretation and complexity are not mutually exclusive perspectives on social systems, but rather both essential – and co-constitutive – properties of the social world. We, in other words, bring together adoption and adaptation in an interpretive computational perspective on the spread of scientific ideas.

To do so, carry out an in-depth and systematic study of how a single idea that has diffused far and wide in academia: Granovetter's (1973) Strength of Weak Ties hypothesis, published in American Journal of Sociology. To construct the diffusion network, we collected data on all publications referencing this paper from Web of Science. For each of the 8198 publications, we retrieved the associated metadata. Using this data, we constructed a network that represents the journey of Granovetter's hypothesis through the academic landscape. We aim to capture the formal scientific communication between authors that involved the idea in question, and therefore draw edges from scholars new to the Strength of Weak Ties hypothesis to the scholars they cite who have previously used the hypothesis.

We first analyze its macroscopic structural patterns using a network representation of citation data. We apply Louvain community detection on the diffusion network, and examine the central actors of each identified community. We employ citation network analysis, topic modeling and close reading to study the way this scientific idea was transformed during its spread as a result of the collective behavior and interpretations of scholars. Next, we examine how different communities in this diffusion network developed specific interpretations of Granovetter's hypothesis and focus on the role of individual scholars in this process.

We find that Granovetter’s diffusion path generates identifiable scientific communities, each of which develops its own interpretation of the hypothesis. Scholars in the various communities focus on different topics, ask different research questions, use distinct vocabularies, and advance the hypothesis in particular ways that fit into their overall research framework. Central figures around whom communities form play pivotal roles in this process; as scholars cite their publications, their work locally becomes a focal point for both the circulation and interpretation of the hypothesis.

Our analysis thus shows that a spreading idea is unlike viral diffusion or social contagion in that every event of transmission involves interpretation by the adopting scholar, consequently leading to a continuous transformation of the idea. Like a chameleon adopting the colors of its surroundings, the notion of weak ties takes on different guises, advanced by the interests and perspectives of the scholars redeploying and building on it. For some researchers, the Strength of Weak Ties is a universal self-organizing principle of complex networks that is not specific to any social context and can only be understood by considering and modeling the network as a whole. Other scholars find strength in weak ties due to their ability to increase the relative status of individuals in society, conceptualizing weak ties as an asset to an individual ego. Different communities use the same reference to make very different points.

Our work thereby advances the literature in three ways. Theoretically, we develop the notion of a diffusion network and conceptualize how scientific innovations are variably adapted throughout their growth trajectory. Our methodological contribution is to develop an approach that bridges the gap between computational analysis of network properties and the interpretative analysis of meaning (cf. Pachucki and Breiger, 2010). Finally, our substantive contribution is to show that the spread of scientific ideas entails a complex process of translation in which scholarly communities emerge as meso-level mediators, cultivating divergent interpretations of the diffusing idea in line with the different research projects in which they are engaged. During this process, some scholars—brokers and leaders—perform key roles in translating and introducing the new scientific idea into their circles and across academic boundaries. The case thereby illustrates that in the social world, meaning-making and complexity are entangled and co-evolving phenomena, calling for approaches capable of taking both into account.

References
Collins, H.M. 1983. The sociology of scientific knowledge: studies of contemporary science. Annu. Rev. Sociol., 9 (1983), pp. 265-285.
Crane D. 1972, Invisible Colleges: Diffusion of Knowledge in Scientific Communities. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Fisher, W.R. 1987 Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action. University of South Carolina Press, Columbia (1987)
Latour, B., 1984. The powers of association. Sociol. Rev., 32 (1984), pp. 264-280
Granovetter, M.S, 1973. The strength of weak ties. Am. J. Sociol., 78 (1973), pp. 1360-1380.
Pachucki M.A, and Breiger R.L, 2010. Cultural holes: beyond relationality in social networks and culture. Annu. Rev. Sociol., 36 (2010), pp. 205-224.

Keuchenius, A., Törnberg, P., Uitermark, J. (2021) Adoption and adaptation: A computational case study of the spread of Granovetter's weak ties hypothesis. Social Networks, Volume 66, p. 10-25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2021.01.001