Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness

Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness
Inquiry and learning into social networks, organizational network analysis, and the relationships among people and systems in complex organizations and networks.

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Saturday, January 05, 2008

It's the networks, stupid!

Hoping that Valdis will pardon the paraphrase...

My husband is a political junkie. After many hours of analysis of the results of the Republican Caucuses in Iowa by pundits on the airwaves, I find the most cogent explanation from my colleague, Valdis Krebs, in his post Social Networks: 1 Political Machine: 0. Valdis, who has written on this topic before (see It's the conversations, stupid), points out that Huckabee tapped into the power of existing networks -- community, political, religious -- to get his word spread. Contrasting the traditional "get the word out" mechanisms as being primarily stranger to stranger (phone banks, mass mailings, etc.) that the networked approach lets the word spread among friends, through conversation, in a way that personalizes the candidate and helps people internalize the message.

We are all in networks, all the time. Networks are more powerful than individuals.

p.s. David Lazar, who studies networks at the Kennedy School of Government, has also noted this phenomenon in his blog. David is planning a conference in June on Networks in Political Science.

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