Information in Digital, Economic and Social Networks

Information Systems Research, Forthcoming

48 Pages Posted: 5 Sep 2012 Last revised: 19 Oct 2012

See all articles by Arun Sundararajan

Arun Sundararajan

NYU Stern School of Business; New York University (NYU) - Center for Data Science

Foster Provost

New York University

Gal Oestreicher-Singer

Tel Aviv University - Coller School of Management

Sinan Aral

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Sloan School of Management

Date Written: October 2012

Abstract

Digital technologies have made networks ubiquitous. A growing body of research is examining these networks to gain a better understanding of how firms interact with their consumers, how people interact with each other, and how current and future digital artifacts will continue to alter business and society. The increasing availability of massive networked data have led to several streams of inquiry across fields as diverse as computer science, economics, information systems, marketing, physics and sociology. Each of these research streams asks questions which at their core involve ‘information in networks’ — its distribution, its diffusion, its inferential value and its influence on social and economic outcomes. We suggest a broad direction for research into social and economic networks. Our analysis describes four kinds of investigation that seem most promising. The first studies how information technologies create and reveal networks whose connections represent social and economic relationships. The second examines the content that flows through networks and its economic, social and organizational implications. A third develops theories and methods to understand and utilize the rich predictive information contained in networked data. A final area of inquiry focuses on network dynamics and how IT affects network evolution. We conclude by discussing several important cross-cutting issues with implications for all four research streams, which must be addressed if the ensuing research is to be both rigorous and relevant. We also describe how these directions of inquiry are interconnected: results and ideas will pollinate across them, leading to a new cumulative research tradition.

Suggested Citation

Sundararajan, Arun and Provost, Foster and Oestreicher-Singer, Gal and Aral, Sinan, Information in Digital, Economic and Social Networks (October 2012). Information Systems Research, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2141682 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2141682

Arun Sundararajan (Contact Author)

NYU Stern School of Business ( email )

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New York, NY 10012
United States

HOME PAGE: http://digitalarun.ai/

New York University (NYU) - Center for Data Science ( email )

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7th Floor
New York, NY 10003
United States

Foster Provost

New York University ( email )

44 West Fourth Street
New York, NY 10012
United States

Gal Oestreicher-Singer

Tel Aviv University - Coller School of Management ( email )

Tel Aviv
Israel

Sinan Aral

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Sloan School of Management ( email )

100 Main Street
E62-416
Cambridge, MA 02142
United States

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