Theorizing the concept of social tie using frames

In classical Social Network Analysis (SNA), what counted as a “social tie” was fixed by available data collection methods. The emergence of large-scale unobtrusive data collection techniques has sparked renewed interest in the very idea of what counts as a “social tie.” Importantly, there has been an acknowledgment that the core issues raised by these developments are primarily conceptual. As a result, there is renewed interest in developing a scientifically grounded characterization of what is arguably the most central concept in social network analysis. This paper contributes to this conceptual effort. I rely on a technique of conceptual representation borrowed from cognitive psychology and cognitive linguistics in which frames for concepts are represented as directed graphs linking attributes to values. I show how the frame representation helps clarify the sort of claims that network theories make (e.g., imposing restrictions on attributes and values), how it helps specify both intra and inter-conceptual relations, how it illuminates seldom noted inter-theoretical commonalities and contrasts, and how it helps avoid common conceptual pitfalls.