To construct or to reveal? Network analysis as formalising communication

Argues that social media platforms are performative network formalisms: they don't merely describe communication but actively shape it through choices about tie symmetry, relation visibility, and information control between relations. What began as an academic method for studying organisational communication has become the very infrastructure through which platforms regulate the flow of communication.

Reviews fifty years of network analysis since Wigand's 1977 article, tracing the evolution from hand-drawn sociograms to computational layout algorithms like Fruchterman-Reingold. Argues that advances in network visualisation and modelling have made networks not just analytical tools but performative systems—platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn are themselves network formalisms that shape the communication they purport to represent.

Poses the central question of whether networks construct or reveal social reality. By distinguishing "interior perspectives" (a person's own view of their relationships) from behavioural traces treated as data, the piece highlights that formalising communication as a network is an epistemological act—one that determines what counts as a tie, who is visible, and what structure emerges.