who/what 'promotes connections'?

The next question that occurred to me as I try to operationalise the definition is, exactly who or what does the 'promoting connections'? I think Chris Jones paper on a 'social practice perspective of Networked Learning' is saying that a book or a comment in a lecture or an email could 'promote connections' which makes networked learning a very broad term 'excluding nothing'. This makes networked learning almost just a frame of reference or a lens with which to see the world rather than a verb or a set of skills as per connectivism or as I have been considering in another post.