Role of Context in Social NetworksPatrick Brzillon

LIP6University of Paris 6 8, rue du capitaine Scott 75015 Paris

Patrick.Brezillon@lip6.fr

AbstractThis paper proposes a context-based approach of socialnetworks and virtual communities in the enterprise area. Wepoint out that making context explicit it is possible to providea global picture of the main aspects of social networks. Afirst result of this study is that the explicit consideration ofcontextsespecially shared contextscould improvenotably the collaborative-work processes in an enterprise. Asecond result shows the interest of simultaneouslyconsidering the paradigms of context and social networkwhen IT is at the core of the enterprise. A third result is topoint out that different types of context account for the fluxof information between groups as well as inside each group.Finally, a virtual community can be considered as acontextualization of a social network, a kind of chunk ofactors.

Introduction1

Facing rapid changes resulting from information andcommunication technologies (ICT), many organizationsenlarge their collaborative decision-making processes.Decision makers work together but not necessarily at thesame time and at the same place. They are supported bycommunication systems like email or by Groupwaresystems, which constitute a kind of electronic infrastructuresuperposed on hierarchical organizations.

Adam, Brzillon and Pomerol (2004) presented the casestudy of XYZ Publications Ltd, a news organization whichpublishes two newspapers: a national morning paper and alocal afternoon paper. The study was lead to understand thenature of the changes undergone by the firm and analyze thegroup dimension of its decision making processes.

In this paper, we consider the role plays by contextwhen the enterprise is considered in term of social network.Organizations are fundamentally information-processingstructures (Kunz, Christiansen, Cohen, Jin and Levitt,1998). In this view, an organization is structured to achievea specific set of tasks, and is composed of actors thatprocess information. Thus, the enterprise is like an"information space" with information fluxes betweenindividuals. An enterprise is assimilated to a social network,which constitutes a complex network of data, informationand knowledge, and several virtual communities appear at Copyright 2005, American Association for Artificial Intelligence(www.aaai.org). All rights reserved.

the different steps of the information-management processcorresponding to a series of specific focuses of attention.

There are different heterogeneous contexts (firm context,personal context, board context, external source contexts, etc.)that have different granularities. However, the key point isthat the complex information fluxes circulating inside theenterprise can be understood such as information transfersbetween all these contexts.

Hereafter, the paper is organized in the following way.The next section specifies the terms of context and socialnetwork used in the paper. The following section discussesdifferent aspects of context considered as important. Wefinally conclude by discussing some challenges that open newperspectives.

Some definitions

External Knowledge, Contextual Knowledge andProceduralized Context

Brzillon and Pomerol (1999) consider three types of context,namely the external knowledge, the contextual knowledge andthe proceduralized context. Figure 1 gives a representation ofthese three types of context.

At a given focus of attention, one distinguishes the part ofthe context that is relevant at this step and the part that is notrelevant. The latter part is called external knowledge. Theformer part is called contextual knowledge, and obviouslydepends on the agent and the current focus of attention. A partof the contextual knowledge is proceduralized to be used atthe focus of attention. We call it the proceduralized context.The proceduralized context is the part of the contextualknowledge that is invoked, assembled, structured and situatedaccording to the given focus. Thus, the focus of attention andits associated context are strongly intertwined.

Contextual knowledge is more or less similar to whatpeople generally have in mind about the term 'context.'Contextual knowledge is personal to an agent and it has noclear limit (McCarthy, 1993). Contextual knowledge isevoked by situations and events, and loosely tied to a task or agoal. When the task becomes more precise, a large part of thiscontextual knowledge can be proceduralized according to thecurrent focus of attention. Although the contextual knowledgeexists in theory, it is actually implicit and latent, and is not

usable unless a goal (or an intention) appears as a focus.When an unexpected event occurs, actors attention isfocused on it and a part of the contextual knowledge will beproceduralized accordingly in order to adapt the decision-making process to this new event.

Figure 1: The three types of context

The context is dynamic (Brzillon, 2003a, 2003b), andthis dynamics corresponds to a movement betweencontextual knowledge and proceduralized context duringthe evolution of the focus of attention: At each step of thefocus of attention, a piece of contextual knowledge entersthe proceduralized context or, conversely, theproceduralized context goes back in the body of contextualknowledge and becomes a chunk of (contextual)knowledge a la Schank (1982) in the body of contextualknowledge and this chunk of contextual knowledge can berecalled later as a whole in a new proceduralized context.Thus, the more a person is experimented, the more theperson possesses available structured knowledge (i.e.chunks of contextual knowledge that have been used asproceduralized context previously).

When the focus of attention is the affair of a workgroup, the proceduralized is built from the bodies ofcontextual knowledge of all the group member , and, whenthe focus moves, the proceduralized context will become anelement of the shared contextual knowledge of the groupmember.

Definition of a Social Network

A social network is the connection of people by a computernetwork (Wellman, 1997), and Internet will be the largersocial network that we will consider in this paper. The mainpoint is that a social network is composed of actors and tiesbetween them (e.g. see Hanneman, 2001). Ties in a socialnetwork are numerous and of different natures: familial ties,lifelong friend ties, marital ties, business partner ties, thatare important for people to obtain the fundamentals ofidentity, affection, emotional and material support

(Rheingold, 2002), i.e. the recognition of their existence byothers. However, the commitment of individuals is superficial,limited to the reasons of the local interaction (Foucault,Metzger, Pignorel and Vaylet, 2002). As a consequence, tiesin a social network are "socially-oriented" like in the real life(weak ties), trust does not play an important role, andindividuals generally belong to several social networks.

A discriminating factor can allow to contrast the socialnetwork with respect to its environment. Thus, adiscriminating factor differentiates individuals in a socialnetwork and individuals in its environment. For example,registration to a mailing list on a specific topic is to enter asocial network where you will find (or may provide)information on the topic, but ties with other members do notmatter essentially or would suppose the development ofspecific interaction inside some groups of the social network.Individuals in the social network are called actors fordifferentiating them from individuals in the environment ofthe social network. However, according to the viewpoint ofinformation fluxes, the frontier between the social network(the actors) and its environment (the individuals) is porous.

The main characteristics of a social network are a flexiblestructure, a lack of hierarchy, a superficial commitment ofactors, which generally belong to several social networks.From an information point of view, any actor in a socialnetwork is a receiver/emitter of information, but generally notan information transformer.

There exists many discriminating factors and as manysocial networks as discriminating factors. A discriminatingfactor does not imply strong ties among actors because adiscriminating factor is neither a goal shared by actors of thesocial network nor a common focus of attention of the actors.For example, a discriminating factor is "Living in France" andall actors in this social network share some common interestson, say, French cooking and wine, but will not act collectivelyin the same direction for that purpose. Actors in a socialnetwork have not necessarily an active role.

The man difference, which is identified in the literaturebetween a virtual community and a social network, concernscomputer-mediated means. The key point is the distinctionbetween the computer-mediated communication concerningeither individuals (e-mail, chat, blogs, etc.) or collaborativework (writing, designing, etc.). Clearly the collaborativedecision making is ascribed in this second realm, and then thefocus-oriented aspect is more important than the computer-mediated aspect.

The Information and Communication Technology (ICT)gives an electronic infrastructure on the organization, which issupposed to reinforce the coherence of the virtual community.However, there is more than a difference of infrastructurebetween a social network and a virtual community. A virtualcommunity is a sub-set of a social network to realize a

collaborative work in order to satisfy a given focus ofattention.

A virtual community is a group of actors who haveregular contact with one another in cyberspace, with sharedinterests, problems or ideas (i.e. a shared focus of attention),independently of space and time. A main characteristic ofvirtual communities is that they are homogeneous andorganized networks of individuals with similar attitudes andlife-styles (Feld, 1981), and they are intentional formations(Valtersson, 1999). This cohesiveness of the virtualcommunity with respect to the rest of the social network isgiven by the focus of attention that is shared by all theactors.

The focus of attention gives a structure on the virtualcommunity by defining an organization of roles on thevirtual community and a coordination of the collaborativework of actors. It acts like an internal engine to impulse thevirtual community. Actors have then a strong motivation inthe realization of the focus and each actor assumes an activerole to satisfy this process. Thus, actors in a virtualcommunity are socially interdependent (Bellah, Madsen,Sullivan, Swidler and Tipton, 1985), not uniquely "socially-oriented" like in the social network. A parallel in thedomain of decision making, would allow to say that onemay observe only a diluted decision making in a socialnetwork and a collaborative decision making in a virtualcommunity.

In a virtual community, the focus of attention affectsactors as a glue force that influence ties between actors(directly connected to the focus of attention and the relatedroles that actors have to play and the corresponding tasks toaccomplish), although the virtual community staysprimarily a social network and keeps all its characteristics ina context that is strongly related to the focus of attention ofthe virtual community.

Some aspects of context

Lessons learned in a case study

We now consider again the case study introduced at thebeginning of the paper and discussed in (Adam andPomerol, 2001; Adam, Brzillon and Pomerol, 2004). It isimportant to acquire the information and its context for acorrect understanding of the information. Information andits context must be considered jointly because theinformation takes a meaning within its context, and,conversely, this context is identified with respect to theinformation.

Actors can share contextual elements coming from theirindividual contexts to build collaboratively a proceduralizedcontext for the solution in the interaction context. Sharing

elements does not mean to develop an identical view of thesolution for all actors, but to make compatible actors' views onthe solution (Karsenty and Brzillon, 1995).

An enterprise, such as the XYZ firm, is assimilated to asocial network, the discriminating factor being to belong ornot to the XYZ firm. However, the frontier between the socialnetwork (i.e. the XYZ firm) and its environment is porous,unpredictable events occurring generally outside the XYZfirm. An external event triggers an information managementprocess in several successive steps. At each step of thisprocess there is a particular focus (with its context) thattriggers a working group organized like a virtual communityfor addressing this particular focus.

Different contexts are associated with elements such as thesocial network, the virtual communities, the actors, theenterprise, etc. These contexts can be organized in a hierarchybased on the granularity of the contexts such as presented inFigure 2.

Another lessons learned from the case study is at the levelof each context. Lets consider the context of a workinggroup. Its context (as for other contexts) presents two aspectsdepending on an internal or external viewpoint. From aninternal viewpoint, this group context contains contextualknowledge such as the general policies, roles and tasks toaccomplish, rules, constraints, objectives. This contextualknowledge is proceduralized for the given focus of attentionin strategies applicable by the actors (within their "individualcontexts") participating in the working group. From anexternal viewpoint, the working group interacts with otherentities and thus the group context can be considered as an"individual context" in a larger group (e.g. the firm, a market,an European project, etc.) in which proceduralized contextsare built from contextual knowledge of the larger group.

Context Granularity

As said previously, information circulates across contexts atdifferent levels of generality. At a general level, wedistinguish the group context, the individual contexts of theactors at an intermediate level, and at the more specific level,the context of the focus of attention that corresponds to theinteraction context in which actors are workingcollaboratively (see Figure 2).

According to our definition of context, the contextualknowledge at one level is transformed in a proceduralizedcontext at the more specific level. For example, contextualinformation of the group context could be "find a compromisebetween a relevant information for the readers of thenewspaper and the notoriety of the sponsors of thenewspaper." This contextual knowledge in the group contextwill be interpreted in the individual contexts of the actors

writing the article in a proceduralized context to give theinformation, say, without links with the sponsors.

Figure 2: Granularity of contexts

With respect to the notion of social network, contextintervenes as intertwined mainly with the virtualcommunity, because the proceduralized context is built in acollaborative way by the actors of the virtual communitythat share a common focus of attention. The focus ofattention leads to the construction of a proceduralizedcontext at each step of its evolution. The saving of theproceduralized context in each actors context implies thatthere is a shared part of the individual contexts developedprogressively among actors. The shared context isdeveloped along actors' interaction in the virtual communityduring the construction of the proceduralized context. As aconsequence, actors develop ties during this construction ofthe proceduralized context.

The presentation of a virtual community through itsfocus of attention and the related context, theproceduralized context that is built, and the ties evolutionthat results, leads to speak of contextualization of a socialnetwork rather than virtual community.

Interaction Context and PC Construction

When a unexpected event occurs, a focus of attentionappears in a given context. Both focus and its context haveto be considered jointly. Focus and context could concern agroup of actors in a social network that have a same concernfor the focus and are sensible to its context, and thus willinterpret the focus with respect to this context. It appears anorganization of tasks to accomplish and of roles that actorshave to play. The actor group becomes assembled,organized and structured like a virtual community and thuswill be able to realize a real collaborative work.

Figure 3: A representation of the proceduralized-contextconstruction

The transformation of contextual knowledge in aproceduralized context supposes a process of communicationbetween different levels. Figure 3 represents how theproceduralized context (PC) is built from contextualknowledge (CK, and EK representing the external knowledge)in individual contexts of two (or more) actors during theirinteraction about the given focus of attention. The interactioncontext contains the pieces of contextual knowledge put byeach actor (i.e. from their individual contexts) in theinteraction context to make them visible and shared with otheractors, and finally organized, assembled and structured jointlyby all the actors during their interaction to elaborate theproceduralized context needs at the given focus of attention.Thus, the proceduralized context is the result of a co-construction by the actors of a virtual community. Once theproceduralized context has been exploited at the current focusof attention, it becomes a piece of the shared contextualknowledge of the actors in the virtual community. Adiscussion on this aspect of context can be found in(Brzillon, 2003b).

A Context-based view of Social Networks

In a previous section, virtual communities are assimilated tocontextualizations of a social network, with (1)contextualization resulting of the focus-dependentreinforcement of ties among groups of actors and (2) tiesreinforcement being developed during the proceduralized-context construction.

As a consequence of the collaborative building of theproceduralized context and the enrichment of the sharedcontext of two actors resulting from this collaborativebuilding, ties between actors are reinforced. Ties are managedat different levels between the actors of the virtual communityduring this proceduralized-context construction until its finalmovement into their shared contextual knowledge.

Figure 4: Parallel between social network and virtualcommunity, and context

This leads to a parallel between both views on contextand on social network. Figure 4 presents a situation for asocial network and virtual community (virtual communitiesare represented distinctly from the original social networkonly for making more readable the comparison) similar tothe situation describes in Figure 2 for the different types ofcontext. The more the granularity is high, the more theentity is organized and structured. Thus, a proceduralizedcontext (respectively a virtual community) has a higherorganization than a body of contextual knowledge(respectively the social network). This parallel is developedin Table 1.

Contextualknowledge

Social network Unstructured

Externalknowledge

Environment Unstructured

Proceduralizedcontext (PC)

Virtualcommunity

Structured

PC building Tie reinforcement Contextualizationprocess

Chunk ofknowledge

Chunk of actors Operationalknowledge

Table 1: Parallel between context and social networks

Conclusion and perspectives

Until now studies on collaborative work, context, socialnetwork, virtual community have been lead separately withany cross-references. In this paper we show that contextplays a central role in order to, in the one hand, give aglobal and coherent view on social network and virtualcommunity, and, in the other hand, replace collaborativework in a new framework providing a new insight oninterrelationships between participants (all coming from asame social network): creating ties being equivalent to build

a proceduralized context and the development of a largeshared context. This new insight on collaborative work comesfrom the choice to consider an enterprise as a structure ofinformation fluxes. This leads to a problem of knowledgemanagement, in which the important point is the managementof the transitions between all the different states of theknowledge such as tacit, implicit, individual, collective, etc.(Prax, 2001). Putting all together, the integration ofknowledge management, context management and contextmanagement seems to be a new challenge in collaborativework.

A virtual community has a limited life cycle wit a birth, alife and an end, which is shorter than the life cycle of thesocial network. Maybe the most interesting differencebetween a social network and a virtual community is that thevirtual community can be compared to a dissipative structureas discussed some times ago in the living system area(Prigogine, 1969), i.e. a structure that maintains anorganization using the flux of energy (the information) thatcrosses it.

We introduce the notion of "chunk of actors" to lead aparallel with the notion of chunk of knowledge a la Schank(1982) and introduces a dynamic dimension to collaborativework apparently not considered explicitly before. Moreover,context can be related to virtual community because the latterresults of a process of contextualization in a social networkcorresponding to the expression chunk of actors.

Even in the unique domain of social network and virtualcommunity, the view presented in this paper is a challenge.First, the view of a virtual community as a contextualizationof a social network to address a given focus of attention is notusual in the literature. This is shown in another domainBrzillon, 2003a) with practices representingcontextualizations of the procedures established by theenterprise in order to address the specificity of the contextualcues of the situation (the focus of attention). Second, theevolution of a focus of attention is described as a series ofcontextualizations of a social network for dealing withdifferent steps of the global focus of attention. Three, a largeproject (e.g. an European project) can lead simultaneously tothe birth of several virtual communities acting in parallel onparts of the problem to solve (e.g. the work packages). Theresults are summed up in Table 1.

Indeed, it seems that it is not good to concentrate on virtualcommunities for a comparison with social networks. Weexplore now this path by reasoning in terms of levels (e.g.community level) and study a four-level model in (Gachet andBrzillon, 2005).

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