Ştefan Vlăduţescu & Ella Magdalena Ciupercă : “Next Flood Level of Communication: Social Networks”


de Mirela Teodorescu și Dan Ionescu

In a network, flooding is the forwarding by a router of a packet from any node to every other node attached to the router except the node from which the packet arrived. Flooding is a way to distribute routing information updates quickly to every node in a large network. It is also sometimes used in multicast packets (from one source node to many specific nodes in a real or virtual network). This is the hardware of the third millennium. It was necessary to develop the software to cover the hardware. So, the story starts!

The book “Next Flood Level of Communication: Social Networks” by Ştefan Vlăduţescu and Ella Magdalena Ciupercă, analyse the social networks in the context of internet development. Who, why, where, when and how interact individuals in society are usual questions in our mind, on the other hand there are a lot of tools developed through which the individual can express free, the duality of his personality can be hidden and in the same time can be braodcasted all over the world. The communication barriers are much reduced due to the increased level of interaction between people in the digital environment; the new media is the ideal place to promote an idea, a project or initiative.

The challenges of a world, in which there is such a spectacular shift, are huge, relationships between people in some episodic changes in connections and continuous interaction. On average, people receive 52 e-mails daily, and more than 7% of them receive more than 100 emails a day. While traditional human relationships are conducted in groups of 2-3 people, the networks are more efficient while the number of participants increase. Everyone can join the hundreds if not thousands of different online communities, depending on the diversity of interests manifested in personal and professional life.

Although the Internet started in a restricted form, being oriented towards the mediated communication area, it finally got out of „control” to become a defining mark of our time. The Internet is increasingly considered as a space for social interaction and communication, as a virtual space created by technological means information that enables access to information and potentially infinite interactions, without any geographical, social or cultural boundaries. But it is a phenomenon which through vastness and complexity requires interdisciplinary approaches: historical, anthropological, technical, economic, sociological, cultural, psychological and political.

In this context of technological changes and globally societal, specify the authors,  it has become essential to analyse the individuals’ social action in virtual space. The sociology of the Internet has established itself as a new branch of sociology with a mission to study these changes and features related to virtual social interaction and communication networks, organizations, institutions, globalized culture to develop explanatory thesis of this new phenomenon. In other words, Internet Sociology is the science which explains the transition from industrial capitalism towards informational capitalism and the new virtual forms of society as well as the social development process determined by the information and communication technologies”.



Social network analysis is a method of analysing the connections and interrelationships between people and organizations used in psychology and anthropology to measure and visualize the flows of information and knowledge flows between people. Organizations can learn to cope with a complex external, dynamic and competitive environment, with systemic thinking, leadership, mental discipline, shared vision and team learning.


The book is structured in five parts. In the first part is  presented a historical approach to the concepts of social relationship and social network. Starting with Aristotle in „Nicomachean Ethics”, Plato in his works, Hesiod in “On the neighbours”, Cicero in „De Amicitia”, continuing with Blaise Pascal, Jean La Bruyere and Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, Emile Durkheim in modern period, the philosophers  were concerned with understanding how individuals interrelate, and formulated several socio-psychological theories, which are useful knowledge upon the interpersonal phenomena: the social distance, sociometry, the social role theory, the social mentally differentiation me – I, interpersonal attraction, the theory of symmetry in interpersonal communication, the social learned theory on aggressiveness, social facilitation, the theory of real conflict emotional aggression and instrumental aggression, the group thinking pathology in decision making, obedience to authority behavioural compliance, learned helplessness, the fundamental attribution error, personal space, the attribution of failure, stereotyping, affiliation, the attribution theory, theory of self-fulfilled prophecy, social support theory, the triangular theory of love.

The second part treats traditional community versus digital community. There are presented definitions of social community in a largely valid form for online communities (virtual), considered to be social spaces made ​​in the digital environment that allow the formation of the groups, continuity and their support mainly through communication processes, but being, this time, mediated by technology and subject to protocols and standards.

The third part deploys the power of online social networks , “new media is any method that allows a wide range of users (from individuals to entities) to create and disseminate information in real time or near real-time that have the ability to influence a wide audience (regional or global) using standardized communications with the unifying platform – the Internet”

The fourth part presents evolution and modern day in social networks. It is hard to recall today the situation that existed not long ago – 10 years ago only 600 million people had Internet access, 95% of them are using Internet Explorer, Apple had a front-page iBook of a 700 MHz processor, and Friendster had an incredible 3 million users From 2002 to 2012 the number of people with Internet access increased to 2.27 billion, and the number of websites grew from 3 million to over 500 million. Also, we have to consider that at every 18 months the computers performances are doubled.

The fifth part shows the membership effects in social. Membership in social networks requires activism, monitoring, evaluation and decision. There are evaluated the merits and demerits of social networks. Social networks are a useful tool for the organization of social life, a binder that allows liaising with others, an assistant that individuals can rely when social demands may be too many. It will remember the birthdays of friends, colleagues and superiors will take advantage of newsletters on the latest events held in the community and will obtain information of the most varied when necessary.

In Conclusions, the authors state “We are investigating social relationships and social networks. We issued from the beginning the thesis that the universe of actions, human interactions and transactions records four existential relationships: personal relationships, social relationships, personal networks and social networking. Although they have been studied separately, they all form a relational universe of human relationships. Our book sought to find and formulate answers to a few questions: What is the Big Bang of the social universe? Who triggers human relational processes, who maintain them, who expands and develops them?


In relation to the human subject, close and visible relationships are personal relationships and invisible relations are social relations. When personal relationships acquire coherence and cohesion in relation to a particular concern, they are structured as personally identifiable network, a circle of relationships that has different variants. Instead, the structure of relations consists of all personal and social relations of a number of people, constructing a social network. In a relation it has to be considered that there is no relationship without communication and  there is no development of relationships without communication.

The book “Next Flood Level of Communication: Social Networks” by Ştefan Vlăduţescu and Ella Magdalena Ciupercă, represents a laborious research work in social network domain of communication, the references proves this. It contains intensive data of last generation  from informational technology, psychology, sociology related to social network. It is useful for master students, Ph. D student, students, everybody who wants to update knowledge concerning New Media, social networks.

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