Chapter 5: Use of Social Networking Websites for Mobile Learning Contexts

Although the term “network” has been used to refer to technological systems in television and computing, it has been used in the social sciences for decades to refer to “mapping human relationships” (Rosen, 2007). Siemens (2004) describes a network as a “connection between entities” (p.4). A social network has the ultimate aim of establishing an incorporated whole by connecting different people.

Social networking studies were triggered by the following question: If there was a set of N people, what would the probability of each member among N people connected to another member via k_1, k_2, k_3 . . . k_n links’ be? Social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, answered this research question with an empirical research study called “Small World Experiment” (Kelty, 2005). Milgram calculated the average number of connections as 5.5 where this number became an expression in the following years as “six degrees of separation” also known as “human web.” Basically, the concept refers to the power of established connections in a small world where people take advantage of these connections (Rosen, 2007).