Understanding Social Networks

• Born at the beginning of the 20th century, social networks have become essential tools in daily life.

Characteristics of Social Networks

• Social networks include websites or applications where users can create a personal profile to connect with their community.
• Users can share various digital or personal information like texts, photos, music, GPS location, or mood.
• The user base of social networks ranges from hundreds of millions to billions worldwide.
• Social networks are primarily American, but China has developed its own networks such as QZone and Sina Weibo.
• Each social network has its own rules; some limit publication time like Snapchat, while others limit data type like YouTube.

A Discreet Economic Model

• Social networking applications rely on user data, which are saved, analyzed, and used by algorithms.
• These algorithms make recommendations for social connections (friends) as well as for commercial (targeted ads) or political purposes (behavioral analysis and voting).

A Response to Individual Needs

• Social entities group together based on needs expressed by the individual.
• These needs are formalized in Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
• Three fundamental needs include personal fulfillment through self-expression.
• Users express themselves through their profiles, feeding their digital identity.
• Socialization fulfills a relational need, allowing users to connect directly or through shared interests such as friends, brands, artists, or places.
• Esteem from others is achieved through communication.
• Users have access to communication tools like instant messaging and forums to manage their e-reputation.

Graphs and "Small Worlds"

• Social networks can be represented as mathematical graphs, where nodes represent social entities such as individuals, animals, machines or cells.
• Links represent social interactions like friendship, shared interests, intimate relationships, or professional connections.
• In 1967, American psychosociologist Stanley Milgram tested the "small worlds" theory.
• The theory states that anyone is connected to anyone else in the world through a chain of six relationships or less.
• On a graph, this means any node is connected to any other node through a path of no more than six edges.
• Facebook claims that the average distance between two individuals within its network is 4.74.

The Dangers of Social Networks

• Teenagers and children who heavily use social networks may not fully understand the risks of sharing photos or videos.
• Cyberviolence, a new form of violence, has emerged.
• Cyberviolence includes harassment, discrimination, and happy slapping.
• Preventive measures and legal frameworks have been put in place to combat cyberviolence.
• The RGPD law highlights the commercial exploitation of personal data and the use of technologies that encourage addiction.
• These factors have an impact on the psychological balance of young people.

RGPD Law

• The General Data Protection Regulation (RGPD) imposes rules to protect data circulating on the web.

Community

• A community is a group of individuals living together or sharing common interests.

Active User

• An active user of a social network regularly accesses the site via the web or mobile version.

Digital Identity

• Digital identity consists of the sum of digital traces related to an individual.
• Digital identity includes self-reported information, sites visited, and publications on social networks.

E-reputation

• E-reputation is the perception that internet users have of a brand, company, or individual based on elements they leave on the web.

Mathematical Graph

• A graph is a set of nodes or vertices connected by links called edges.