Role of Context in Social Networks

It is pointed out that making context explicit it is possible to provide a global picture of the main aspects of social networks, and that the explicit consideration of contexts could improve notably the collaborative-work processes in an enterprise.

Abstract

We propose to apply a context-based approach used in AI for discussing of social networks and virtual communities in the enterprise area. We point out that making context explicit it is possible to provide a global picture of the main aspects of social networks. A first result of this study is that the explicit consideration of contexts—especially shared contexts—could improve notably the collaborative-work processes in an enterprise. A second result is the interest of simultaneously considering the paradigms of context and social network when ICT is at the core of the enterprise. A third result is to point out that different types of context account for the flux of information between groups as well as inside each group. Finally, a parallel is lead between the couple proceduralized context versus contextual knowledge in AI and virtual community versus social networks. This parallel allows to assimilate a virtual community to a contextualization of a social network, i.e. a kind of “chunk of actors”.