Integrated social networks and information diffusion: understanding information circulation in social games

Abstract

The paper aims to present a discussion on how the social network of social games is consisted, parting from a discussion regarding the information diffusion mechanisms in the game. For this, we carried out a participant observation and applied a questionnaire that was answered by social games players of Facebook in order to understand how information about the game is disseminated within the game and on the social network that surrounds the social game. By observing these flows of information, we realized that there is an integrated social network (from the game) into a larger social network (in this case, the Facebook site). In both networks we found certain characteristics with peculiar dynamics in each one. Besides confirming that the game social network ends up benefiting from the easy access to interaction tools, considering that players can use the main network in order to obtain benefits for the integrated network, we observed that the information diffusion mechanisms from social games seem to set new values even on the larger network of Facebook.