Information Technology Reference
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These examinations have established that this group of participants overall has
more weak ties than strong ties on Facebook, although some appear focused on
maintaining only strong ties, and that the overall quantity of both weak and strong
ties may be enhanced by online networking technology. This section has also
established that connections perceived to have a higher intensity are more
accurately perceived than those with a lower intensity.
4.3 Perceptual Differences
In this section, we will examine data testing Hypothesis (3): that increased user
closeness correlates with improved perceptual accuracy about social networks. We
will first examine a simple model based on connections with a single user, and
progress to a model that integrates connections to both users.
Figure 7 presents our simple model. It shows that connection to a single user
predicts more accurately than baseline, but not that increasing connection intensity
increases accuracy.
Fig. 7
Examines the accuracy of participants perceptions be comparing category (x-axis),
labels described in caption of Fig 5, to absolute difference in perceived intensity (y-axis).
Where available, a connection member's own rating of their connection is considered
baseline, otherwise the rounded average is assumed as baseline. Under this schema, a
perfectly accurate perception will be given a rating of 0, while a completely inaccurate
perception will be given a score of 5. All values are scaled so that perceived intensity sums
to 1. The data show that there exists a statistical advantage when a connection of arbitrary
strength is present, but no advantage beyond that. (n = 518 ratings)
To integrate the user's connection to both ratings, Figure 8 follows the intuition
of Figure 3 in summing the participants' perceived connection intensity to both
participants in the queried connection. This approach shows a clear rise in
accurate connections, defined as those scoring 0. A significant rise in accuracy is
seen for sums three and four which remains unexplained and requires further
