Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Title
Research in the Sociology of Organizations: Contemporary Perspectives on Organizational Social Networks
Publisher
Emerald Group Publishing Ltd.
Publication Date
2014
Disciplines
Business | Marketing
Abstract
Social networks are not just patterns of interaction and sentiment in the real world; they are also cognitive (re)constructions of social relations, some real, some imagined. Focusing on networks as mental entities, our essay describes a new method that relies on stylized network images to gather quantitative data on how people “see” specific aspects of their social worlds. We discuss the logic of our approach, present several examples of “visual network scales,” discuss some preliminary findings, and identify some of the problems and prospects in this nascent line of work on the phenomenology of social networks.
Rights
© 2014 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Recommended Citation
Mehra, A., Borgatti, S., Soltis, S., Floyd, T., Ofem, B., Halgin, D., and Kidwell, V. (2014). Imaginary Worlds: Using Visual Network Scales to Capture Perceptions of Social Networks. In S. Borgatti, D. Brass, D. Halgin, G. Labianca & A. Mehra (Eds.), Research in the Sociology of Organizations: Contemporary Perspectives on Organizational Social Networks. Emerald Group Publishing Ltd.