The duality of networks and groups: Models to generate two-mode networks from one-mode networks

Abstract

Focus theory describes how shared memberships, social statuses, beliefs, and places can facilitate the formation of social ties, while two-mode projections provide a method for transforming two-mode data on individuals' memberships in groups into a one-mode network of their possible social ties. In this paper, I explore the opposite process: how social ties can facilitate the formation of groups, and how a two-mode network can be generated from a one-mode network. Drawing on theories of team formation, club joining, and organization recruitment, I propose three models that describe how such groups might emerge from the relationships in a social network. I show that these models can be used to generate two-mode networks that have characteristics commonly observed in empirical two-mode social networks, and that they encode features of the one-mode networks from which they were generated. I conclude by discussing these models' limitations, and future directions for theory and methods concerning group formation.