A Taxonomy of Communication Networks

Leveraging Social Network Analysis for Research on Journalism in the Information Age

“…Recently, Shumate and Contractor () theorized and defined four types of communication relations: affinity, flow, representational, and semantic. The primary advantage of this typology is the generalizability of knowledge across communication disciplines (Shumate et al, ). For example, both journalism and organizational communication scholars might engage in the study of representational relations, although the nodes might vary (e.g., media organizations vs. nonprofit organizations).…”

“…The symbolic affiliation nature of hyperlink networks suggests the structure of media organizations, furthering our understanding of the media system offline and online. In addition to hyperlinks, future journalism and media scholars could pay more attention to other forms of representational relations, such as name mentions on websites and citation networks among scholars (Shumate et al, ). To illustrate, an organizational actor (e.g., nonprofit organization) might intentionally mention the name of a news outlet to establish credibility and associative reputation.…”

“…In particular, the networked media environment suggests that immediate and indirect networks influence organizations and individuals. The “relational, systemic, and contextual” (Shumate et al, , p. 95) approach of social network analysis provides rich theoretical mechanisms and methodologies to explain and predict the emergent patterns of media structures, composed of media consumers, organizations, and content.…”

“…Social network analysis is increasingly being used across the communication discipline and its subfields, such as organizational communication and computer‐mediated communication (Monge & Contractor, ; Shumate et al, ). However, its application to journalism studies has yet to be fully realized.…”

“…The purpose of this essay is to promote social network analysis in the study of journalism. First, it applies a communication network taxonomy (Shumate & Contractor, ; Shumate et al, ) focusing on network relations to the study of journalism. This framework draws attention to the types of communication relations that characterize different networked journalism phenomena and allows scholars to synthesize findings across communication.…”