Halgin, Borgatti, Huang Published in Social Networks

Dan Halgin, Steve Borgatti, and Zhi Huang recently published “Prismatic Effects of Negative Ties” in Social Networks. Research on negative ties has focused primarily on the harm they do. In this paper, Halgin and co-authors show that negative ties can also have beneficial market effects. They argue that, like positive ties, negative ties can link actors together in the minds of observers, and theorize that negative ties with high-status others can benefit a focal actor. They test their ideas by analyzing the phenomenon of “diss songs” in hip-hop music and their effect on album sales.