Networks from communication

Abstract

This article proposes to model and empirically study social networks as emerging, stabilizing, and changing in the process of communication. Rather than starting from actors, communicative events are conceptualized as the basic units. In the sequence of communication, these events are attributed to actors, together with underlying dispositions. Relational expectations about the behavior of actors towards others result, effectively structuring communication and making for the regularities of communication we observe as relationships and networks. Not only individuals, but also collective and corporate actors can feature as nodes in social networks – as long as action is attributed to them, and relational expectations about their behavior to other actors develop. The approach combines recent developments in the theory of social networks by Harrison White and others with Niklas Luhmann’s theory of communication.