On open social media platforms, the convergence of diverse, often incompatible audiences—colleagues, family, strangers—within a single communicative space creates persistent challenges for civil expression. This longitudinal study examines how the structural properties of users' social networks and their use of addressivity (@mentions and replies) shaped communication civility on Twitter during the early 2010s. Drawing on a dataset of 1,827 user timelines with over 1,700 tweets each spanning approximately 4.4 years, we operationalize civility across four measures—offensive language, sensitive content, negative sentiment, and positive sentiment—and track how each individual's behavior changes over time. Our main finding challenges network closure theory: contrary to predictions derived from Coleman's closure argument that densely interconnected networks promote civility through heightened accountability, increased network constraint predicts less civil expression, suggesting that tightly knit networks foster in-group communicative norms that diverge from mainstream standards. By contrast, addressivity consistently promotes civil expression across all measures, supporting audience design and politeness theories and demonstrating their robustness in context-collapsed digital environments. Together, these findings demonstrate that civility on social media is a dynamic response to communicative context rather than a stable individual trait. The tight-knit network structures that promote accountability in face-to-face communication can have the opposite effect online, where group belonging encourages rather than discourages norm-deviant expression.

Geographic network visualizations often require assigning nodes to geographic coordinates, but this can be challenging when precise node locations are undefined. We explore this problem using U.S. senators as a case study. Each state has two senators, and thus it is difficult to assign clear individual locations. We devise eight different node placement strategies ranging from geometric approaches such as state centroids and longest axis midpoints to data-driven methods using population centers and home office locations. Through expert evaluation, we found that specific coordinates such as senators' office locations and state centroids are preferred strategies, while random placements and the longest axis method are least favored. The findings also highlight the importance of aligning node placement with research goals and avoiding potentially misleading encodings. This paper contributes to future advancements in geospatial network visualization software development and aims to facilitate more effective exploratory spatial data analysis.

This study examines the survival and evolution of 443K bidirectional mention ties on Twitter by merging datasets collected before 2015 and in the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic (February to June, 2020). We hypothesize that strong pre-existing ties, marked by frequent communication and shared identities, endure and tolerate cognitive and stance differences over time. Our findings show that surviving ties are stronger than average pre-2015 ties but exhibit greater cognitive distance in COVID-19 discussions, suggesting that strong ties can tolerate different and even opposing opinions on contentious topics. This challenges traditional models of social influence and homophily, which predict increased cognitive similarity within strong ties. The findings imply the potential for old ties to function as network bridges, reducing political divides by connecting dissimilar social groups.

Many social phenomena can be modeled as cascades in networks, where nodes adopt a behavior in response to peers adopting. When studying cascades, researchers typically assume that the number of active peers when a node adopts is equivalent to the node's threshold for adoption. This assumption is rarely justified due to the "opacity problem": networked cascades reveal intervals which contain thresholds, rather than point estimates. Existing approaches take the maximum of each node's threshold interval, which biases models of social influence. Opacity is inevitable in many small graphs when using the threshold model, resulting from the networked process itself rather than data collection techniques. Using simulation, we extend this finding to the probabilistic SI (independent cascade) model. We confirm these theoretical results by studying 50 large hashtag cascades among 3.2 million Twitter users, finding that 20% of adoptions suffer from opacity. Different assumptions in response to opacity qualitatively change conclusions about peer influence. While opacity is a far-reaching problem, it can be addressed. Using information from nodes who have tightly bounded intervals allows building models to reduce error in estimating node thresholds.

In this paper, we address the theoretical puzzles regarding the distributional relationship between network positions and the economy through individual- and country-level analyses of Twitter communication networks. Constructing within- country Twitter communication networks, we measure each user's network social capital by well-known network metrics. Through an analysis of housing price and network position for a sample of U.S. Twitter users, we first establish the validity of using Twitter communication networks as a proxy for measuring network social capital. We then use a larger sample of Twitter users across multiple countries and combine it with national economic indicators of per capita GDP and income inequality to show that the individual network positions as well as the inequality in the distribution of those positions at the country level both correlate with national indicators of economic development and income distribution.

Long-range connections that span large social networks are widely assumed to be weak, composed of sporadic and emotionally distant relationships. However, researchers historically have lacked the population-scale network data needed to verify the predicted weakness. Using data from 11 culturally diverse population-scale networks on four continents-encompassing 56 million Twitter users and 58 million mobile phone subscribers-we find that long-range ties are nearly as strong as social ties embedded within a small circle of friends. These high-bandwidth connections have important implications for diffusion and social integration.

Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings includes abstracts of all papers and symposia presented at the annual conference, plus 6-page abridged versions of the “Best Papers” accepted for inclusion in the program (approximately 10%). Papers published in the Proceedings are abridged because presenting papers at their full length could preclude subsequent journal publication. Please contact the author(s) directly for the full papers. Rarely Seen ‘Wormholes’ Contract Global Social NetworksPark, Patrick and Macy, Michael W.Park, PatrickNorthwestern U.Cornell U. and Macy, Michael W.Northwestern U.Cornell U.Published Online:30 Nov 2017https://doi.org/10.5465/AMBPP.2017.17620abstractAboutSections ToolsDownload CitationsAdd to favoritesTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail AbstractWe report the discovery of high bandwidth bridge ties (or ""wormholes"") in population-scale social networks. Social ties that bridge between clusters are widely assumed to be relatively rare and to connect acquaintances whose interactions are sporadic and emotionally distant, but researchers have lacked the global network data needed to verify the predicted weakness. Using data for 56M Twitter users from eight culturally and economically diverse countries, supplemented with nationwide telephone data, we confirmed the predicted scarcity of long bridge ties but not their weakness. Instead, these ""social wormholes"" are far stronger in some cases than embedded ties with a friend in common, thereby contracting extreme network distances, with important implications for social integration and the rapid diffusion of persuasive communications that require strong social bonds.FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Vol. 2017, No. 1 Permissions Metrics in the past 12 months History Published online 30 November 2017 Published in print 1 August 2017 InformationCopyright of Academy of Management Journal is the property of Academy of Management and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder’s express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.Keywordsbridge tiessocial networkstie strength

How does status ambiguity affect reciprocation in gift exchange? We argue that actors in an exchange relationship delay reciprocation as a means of subtly claiming dominance when relative status is ambiguous. Using a two-step link-tracing sample of gift exchange dyads from an online social network site in the early days of social media, we analyze the probability of two-way exchange dyads and the timing of reciprocation while accounting for the nested and autocorrelated data structure. The results support the predicted inverted-U shape relationship between the hazard of reciprocation and status difference. This pattern is strongest when actors lack common foci of interaction from which relative status could be gauged accurately. In addition, a higher status individual tends to delay reciprocation longer than a lower-status individual, a finding consistent with the status competition explanation. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Twitter users vary widely in their level of activity. Active Twitter users not only tweet more often than others but they also tend to mention other users with higher frequency and the set of time stamped global positioning system (GPS) locations in their tweets are more complete. The time, location

We propose a classification method for group vs. individual accounts on Twitter, based solely on communication network characteristics. While such a language-agnostic, network-based approach has been used in the past, this paper motivates the task from firmly established theories of human interactional constraints from cognitive science to sociology. Time, cognitive, and social role constraints limit the extent to which individuals can maintain social ties. These constraints are expressed in observable network metrics at the node (i.e. account) level which we identify and exploit for inferring group accounts.

Conflicts fueled by popular religious mobilization have rekindled the controversy surrounding Samuel Huntington’s theory of changing international alignments in the Post-Cold War era. In The Clash of Civilizations, Huntington challenged Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis that liberal democracy had emerged victorious out of Post-war ideological and economic rivalries. Based on a top-down analysis of the alignments of nation states, Huntington famously concluded that the axes of international geo-political conflicts had reverted to the ancient cultural divisions that had characterized most of human history. Until recently, however, the debate has had to rely more on polemics than empirical evidence. Moreover, Huntington made this prediction in 1993, before social media connected the world’s population. Do digital communications attenuate or echo the cultural, religious, and ethnic “fault lines” posited by Huntington prior to the global diffusion of social media? We revisit Huntington's thesis using hundreds of millions of anonymized email and Twitter communications among tens of millions of worldwide users to map the global alignment of interpersonal relations. Contrary to the supposedly borderless world of cyberspace, a bottom-up analysis confirms the persistence of the eight culturally differentiated civilizations posited by Huntington, with the divisions corresponding to differences in language, religion, economic development, and spatial distance.

Granovetter's article on the strength of weak ties is one of the most widely cited in the social sciences in the past 40 years. Compared to a strong tie, a weak tie tends to span long network distances, thereby promoting access to otherwise unavailable information, greater social integration, and more rapid diffusion of innovations. However, the hypothesized length of weak ties has eluded empirical research, primarily due to the paucity of fine-grained network data at the population level. Using complete telephone communication data from the entire United Kingdom during a one-month period, we confirmed that the median volume of communication initially declines as the length of the tie increases from 2 to 4 steps, as Granovetter predicts. However, we discovered that the opposite holds for ties of length greater than 4, such that ties of length 10, while relatively few in number, are nearly as strong as ties of length 3. We examine three competing explanations: 1) nodes with few neighbors tend to invest heavily in their relations with one another but with a lower probability of having a neighbor in common; 2) the telephone is used both socially and instrumentally, such that the social use is consistent with Granovetter’s thesis while the instrumental use is not; 3) social and spatial mobility causes social ties to be “stretched” across the network, with a probability of being broken that is greater for ties that are weak. We conclude that this selection effect is the explanation with the greatest empirical support.

This paper explores the question of how social status influences negative tie formation. Although previous literature in network scholarship has identified the role of social status in tie formation, it has mainly focused on the presence and the absence of positive ties such as friendship and exchange partnership as outcomes. However, another possible significant outcome has been neglected, namely the creation of negative ties. This relative neglect of negative ties has limited the understanding of status claims and network dynamics. In the current paper, I develop and test sets of competing possibilities about the role of status in the formation of negative ties. In using original 56 distinct social networks with negative tie data, I find that social status plays an important role in negative tie formation. In particular, I find that negative ties occur disproportionately from individuals of higher status and are directed towards individuals of lower status. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

In The Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntington argued that the primary axis of global conflict was no longer ideological or economic but cultural and religious, and that this division would characterize the “battle lines of the future.” In contrast to the top down approach in previous research focused on the relations among nation states, we focused on the flows of interpersonal communication as a bottom-up view of international alignments. To that end, we mapped the locations of the world’s countries in global email networks to see if we could detect cultural fault lines. Using IPgeolocation on a worldwide anonymized dataset obtained from a large Internet company, we constructed a global email network. In computing email flows we employ a novel rescaling procedure to account for differences due to uneven adoption of a particular Internet service across the world. Our analysis shows that email flows are consistent with Huntington’s thesis. In addition to location in Huntington’s “civilizations,” our results also attest to the importance of both cultural and economic factors in the patterning of inter-country communication ties.

In The Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntington argued that the primary axis of global conflict was no longer ideological or economic but cultural and religious, and that this division would characterize the "battle lines of the future." In contrast to the "top down" approach in previous research focused on the relations among nation states, we focused on the flows of interpersonal communication as a bottom-up view of international alignments. To that end, we mapped the locations of the world's countries in global email networks to see if we could detect cultural fault lines. Using IP-geolocation on a worldwide anonymized dataset obtained from a large Internet company, we constructed a global email network. In computing email flows we employ a novel rescaling procedure to account for differences due to uneven adoption of a particular Internet service across the world. Our analysis shows that email flows are consistent with Huntington's thesis. In addition to location in Huntington's "civilizations," our results also attest to the importance of both cultural and economic factors in the patterning of inter-country communication ties.

Voice over IP Security Security best practices derived from deep analysis of the latest VoIP network threats Patrick Park VoIP security issues are becoming increasingly serious because voice networks and services cannot be protected from recent intelligent attacks and fraud by traditional systems such as firewalls and NAT alone. After analyzing threats and recent patterns of attacks and fraud, consideration needs to be given to the redesign of secure VoIP architectures with advanced protocols and intelligent products, such as Session Border Controller (SBC). Another type of security issue is how to implement lawful interception within complicated service architectures according to government requirements. Voice over IP Security focuses on the analysis of current and future threats, the evaluation of security products, the methodologies of protection, and best practices for architecture design and service deployment. This book not only covers technology concepts and issues, but also provides detailed design solutions featuring current products and protocols so that you can deploy a secure VoIP service in the real world with confidence. Voice over IP Security gives you everything you need to understand the latest security threats and design solutions to protect your VoIP network from fraud and security incidents. Patrick Park has been working on product design, network architecture design, testing, and consulting for more than 10 years. Currently Patrick works for Cisco as a VoIP test engineer focusing on security and interoperability testing of rich media collaboration gateways. Before Patrick joined Cisco, he worked for Covad Communications as a VoIP security engineer focusing on the design and deployment of secure network architectures and lawful interception (CALEA). Patrick graduated from the Pusan National University in South Korea, where he majored in computer engineering. Understand the current and emerging threats to VoIP networks Learn about the security profiles of VoIP protocols, including SIP, H.323, and MGCP Evaluate well-known cryptographic algorithms such as DES, 3DES, AES, RAS, digital signature (DSA), and hash function (MD5, SHA, HMAC) Analyze and simulate threats with negative testing tools Secure VoIP services with SIP and other supplementary protocols Eliminate security issues on the VoIP network border by deploying an SBC Configure enterprise devices, including firewalls, Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express, IP phones, and multilayer switches to secure VoIP network traffic Implement lawful interception into VoIP service environments This IP communications book is part of the Cisco Press Networking Technology Series. IP communications titles from Cisco Press help networking professionals understand voice and IP telephony technologies, plan and design converged networks, and implement network solutions for increased productivity. Category: NetworkingIP Communication Covers: VoIP Security