REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES

BOHOL ISLAND STATE UNIVERSITY

MAIN CAMPUS
CPG NORTH AVENUE, TAGBILARAN CITY

Vision: A premier S & T university for the formation of a world class and virtuous human resource for sustainable development in Boho l and the country.
Mission: Committed to provide quality higher education in the arts and sciences, as well as in the professional and technological fields; undertake research and
development, and extension services for the sustainable development in Bohol and the country.

COG 1
Social Networking for Social Integration

Read the seminal work of Mark Granovetter “The Strength of Weak Ties” and synthesize your understanding through
giving a reaction paper.

The work of American Sociologist Mark Granovetter entitled “The Strength of Weak Ties” is very interesting
and mind boggling especially when he noted that weak ties still matters. His works tackle and refers to strong ties as
our friends and the weak ties as your acquaintances. Mark talks about the interpersonal relationships between
different, disparate groups of people and how they hold different sections of society together. As humans, we can
have both strong and weak tie relationships in our normal networks. We can multiplex these relationships. We are
weak ties to some of our connections and strong ties to others. Just like a network multiplexer our weak ties can
carry both types of signals around our network.

He furthered that weak ties are crucial in binding groups of strong ties together. They bring circles of
networks into contact with each other, strengthening relationships and forming new bonds between existing
relationship circles. The weak tie between Ego and his acquaintance, therefore, becomes not merely a trivial
acquaintance tie but rather a crucial bridge between the two densely knit clumps of close friends.

What I love about his paperwork was his highlight about the weak ties, in which it may mean more to us
that what we mostly think of. I’ve also learned that before most sociologists and scholars assume and believe that
an individual’s well-being depended mainly on the quality of relationships with close friends and family. But, it was
the professor of Stanford University, Mark Granovetter, who showed that quantity matters too.

Based on his work, I’ve came to the idea that it is not just the strong ties that matters, but weak ties also
and it might bring crucial information about a new job opportunity, a new start up business or new connections into
other areas. Our relationship with weak ties(acquaintances) should be maintained and cultivated to encourage free
flow. This information flow could be the information needed to get ahead in your own work, or it might be
recommendations and information about the skills and abilities to get you the job / contract / opportunity you've
been looking. His work is an important factor for both recruiters and job seekers.

Overall, upon reading the context of his paper; I’ve develop the idea that weak ties could act as bridges to
other networks. The work “The Strength of Weak Ties” helped put my senses and fuel my longstanding belief that
weak ties are not useless, and this ties may mean to us more than what we usually think of it.