Tie Strength Literature Review

Literature Review (A review of previous studies/ Theoretical framework)

Tie Strength
The strength of tie is is a quantifiable property that characterised the link between two nodes (Granovetter, 1973; Haythornthwaite, 2002; Chu and Kim, 2011). It distinguishes how communication is being expressed between the nodes, as well as the motivations behind why people interact and communicate (Granovetter, 1973; Haythornthwaite, 2002; Chu and Kim, 2011). Based on Granovetter’s (1973) definition, tie strength is “a combination of the amount of the, the motional intensity, the intimacy (mutual confiding) and reciprocal services which characterise the tie”. Granovetter (1973) has identified two types of tie strengths, strong and weak. “Strong” ties are people who you know well and interact with often (Granovetter, 1983; Haythornthwaite, 2002). They are usually your close friends who you trust, exhibit similar interests, share the same values with, and have social circles that overlap with your own (Lin and Bhattacherjee, 2008). “Weak” ties, on the other hand, exists between

To gather objective tie strength data, several researchers have adopted Granovetter’s proposed four tie strength dimensions: amount of time, intimacy, emotional intensity, and reciprocal services (Luarn & Chiu, 2015). However, many other researcher while studying tie strengths have subsequently identified more indicators of tie strength and expanded the list. Additional dimensions such as structural variable (Ellison et al., 2007; Lin et al.,
1981; Xiang et al., 2010), emotional support variables (Marsden and Campbell, 1984;
Wellman and Wortley, 1990), and social distance variables (He et al., 2012; Lin et al.,
1981) are added to the list of indicators. There is thus a total of seven tie strength dimensions that can be used to examine the strength of