Social Network Analysis
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Social network analysis (SNA) is the process of investigating social structures through the use of
networks Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...
and
graph theory In mathematics, graph theory is the study of ''graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are conne ...
. It characterizes networked structures in terms of ''nodes'' (individual actors, people, or things within the network) and the ''ties'', ''edges'', or ''links'' (relationships or interactions) that connect them. Examples of
social structure In the social sciences, social structure is the aggregate of patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of individuals. Likewise, society is believed to be grouped into structurally rel ...
s commonly visualized through social network analysis include social media networks,
memes A meme ( ) is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural i ...
spread, information circulation, friendship and acquaintance networks, business networks, knowledge networks, difficult working relationships, social networks,
collaboration graph In mathematics and social science, a collaboration graph is a graph modeling some social network where the vertices represent participants of that network (usually individual people) and where two distinct participants are joined by an edge wheneve ...
s,
kinship In anthropology, kinship is the web of social relationships that form an important part of the lives of all humans in all societies, although its exact meanings even within this discipline are often debated. Anthropologist Robin Fox says that ...
,
disease transmission In medicine, public health, and biology, transmission is the passing of a pathogen causing communicable disease from an infected host individual or group to a particular individual or group, regardless of whether the other individual was previo ...
, and
sexual relationships An intimate relationship is an interpersonal relationship that involves physical or emotional intimacy. Although an intimate relationship is commonly a sexual relationship, it may also be a non-sexual relationship involving family, friends, or ...
. These networks are often visualized through ''
sociogram A sociogram is a graphic representation of social links that a person has. It is a graph drawing that plots the structure of interpersonal relations in a group situation. Overview Sociograms were developed by Jacob L. Moreno to analyze choice ...
s'' in which nodes are represented as points and ties are represented as lines. These visualizations provide a means of qualitatively assessing networks by varying the visual representation of their nodes and edges to reflect attributes of interest. Social network analysis has emerged as a key technique in modern
sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of Empirical ...
. It has also gained significant popularity in the following -
anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...
,
biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...
,
demography Demography () is the statistics, statistical study of populations, especially human beings. Demographic analysis examines and measures the dimensions and Population dynamics, dynamics of populations; it can cover whole societies or groups ...
,
communication studies Communication studies or communication science is an academic discipline that deals with processes of human communication and behavior, patterns of communication in interpersonal relationships, social interactions and communication in differen ...
,
economics Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...
,
geography Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and ...
,
history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...
,
information science Information science (also known as information studies) is an academic field which is primarily concerned with analysis, collection, Categorization, classification, manipulation, storage, information retrieval, retrieval, movement, dissemin ...
,
organizational studies Organization studies (also called organization science or organizational studies) is the academic field interested in a ''collective activity, and how it relates to organization, organizing, and management''. It is "the examination of how individua ...
,
political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...
, public health,
social psychology Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the r ...
,
development studies Development studies is an interdisciplinary branch of social science. Development studies is offered as a specialized master's degree in a number of reputed universities around the world. It has grown in popularity as a subject of study since the e ...
,
sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural Norm (sociology), norms, expectations, and context (language use), context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on languag ...
, and
computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...
and is now commonly available as a consumer tool (see the list of SNA software). The advantages of SNA are twofold. Firstly, it can process a large amount of relational data and describe the overall relational network structure. tem and parameter selection to confirm the influential nodes in the network, such as in-degree and out-degree centrality. SNA context and choose which parameters to define the “center” according to the characteristics of the network. Through analyzing nodes, clusters and relations, the communication structure and position of individuals can be clearly described.


History

Social network analysis has its theoretical roots in the work of early sociologists such as
Georg Simmel Georg Simmel (; ; 1 March 1858 – 26 September 1918) was a German sociologist, philosopher, and critic. Simmel was influential in the field of sociology. Simmel was one of the first generation of German sociologists: his neo-Kantian approach l ...
and
Émile Durkheim David Émile Durkheim ( or ; 15 April 1858 – 15 November 1917) was a French sociologist. Durkheim formally established the academic discipline of sociology and is commonly cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science, al ...
, who wrote about the importance of studying patterns of relationships that connect social actors. Social scientists have used the concept of "
social networks A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...
" since early in the 20th century to connote complex sets of relationships between members of social systems at all scales, from interpersonal to international. In the 1930s
Jacob Moreno Jacob Levy Moreno (born Iacob Levy; May 18, 1889 – May 14, 1974) was a Romanian-American psychiatrist, psychosociologist, and educator, the founder of psychodrama, and the foremost pioneer of group psychotherapy. During his lifetime, he was rec ...
and Helen Jennings introduced basic analytical methods. In 1954,
John Arundel Barnes John Arundel Barnes M.A. D.Phil. DSC FBA (9 September 1918 – 13 September 2010) was an Australian and British Social anthropology, social anthropologist. Until his death in 2010, Barnes held the post of Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Fellow ...
started using the term systematically to denote patterns of ties, encompassing concepts traditionally used by the public and those used by social scientists: bounded
groups A group is a number of persons or things that are located, gathered, or classed together. Groups of people * Cultural group, a group whose members share the same cultural identity * Ethnic group, a group whose members share the same ethnic ide ...
(e.g., tribes, families) and social
categories Category, plural categories, may refer to: Philosophy and general uses *Categorization, categories in cognitive science, information science and generally *Category of being *Categories (Aristotle), ''Categories'' (Aristotle) *Category (Kant) ...
(e.g., gender, ethnicity). Scholars such as
Ronald Burt Ronald Stuart Burt (born 1949) is an American sociologist. He is the Charles M. Harper Leadership Professor of Sociology and Strategy at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a Distinguished Professor at Bocconi University. He ...
,
Kathleen Carley Kathleen M. Carley is an American social scientist specializing in dynamic network analysis. She is a professor in the School of Computer Science in the Institute for Software Research at Carnegie Mellon University and also holds appointments ...
,
Mark Granovetter Mark Sanford Granovetter (; born October 20, 1943) is an American sociologist and professor at Stanford University. He is best known for his work in social network theory and in economic sociology, particularly his theory on the spread of info ...
,
David Krackhardt David Krackhardt is Professor of Organizations at Heinz College and the Tepper School of Business, with courtesy appointments in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences (Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences) and the Machine Le ...
,
Edward Laumann Edward Otto Laumann (born August 31, 1938) is an American sociologist. He is the George Herbert Mead Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. Laumann earned his Ph.D. in the Harvard Department ...
,
Anatol Rapoport Anatol Rapoport ( uk, Анатолій Борисович Рапопо́рт; russian: Анато́лий Бори́сович Рапопо́рт; May 22, 1911January 20, 2007) was an American mathematical psychologist. He contributed to genera ...
,
Barry Wellman Barry Wellman (born 1942) is a Canadian-American sociologist and is the co-director of the Toronto-based international NetLab Network. His areas of research are community sociology, the Internet, human-computer interaction and social structur ...
,
Douglas R. White Douglas R. White (1942 – 22 August 2021) was an American complexity researcher, social anthropologist, sociologist, and social network researcher at the University of California, Irvine. Biography Douglas White was born in Minneapolis in 194 ...
, and
Harrison White Harrison Colyar White (born March 21, 1930) is the emeritus Giddings Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. White played an influential role in the “Harvard Revolution” in social networks and the New York School of relational sociol ...
expanded the use of systematic social network analysis. SNA has been extensively used in research on study abroad second language acquisition. Even in the study of literature, network analysis has been applied by Anheier, Gerhards and Romo, Wouter De Nooy, and Burgert Senekal. Indeed, social network analysis has found applications in various academic disciplines, as well as practical applications such as countering
money laundering Money laundering is the process of concealing the origin of money, obtained from illicit activities such as drug trafficking, corruption, embezzlement or gambling, by converting it into a legitimate source. It is a crime in many jurisdictions ...
and
terrorism Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...
.


Metrics

Size: The number of network members in a given network.


Connections

Homophily Homophily () is a concept in sociology describing the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others, as in the proverb "". The presence of homophily has been discovered in a vast array of network studies: over have observed ...
: The extent to which actors form ties with similar versus dissimilar others. Similarity can be defined by gender, race, age, occupation, educational achievement, status, values or any other salient characteristic. Homophily is also referred to as assortativity. Multiplexity: The number of content-forms contained in a tie. For example, two people who are friends and also work together would have a multiplexity of 2. Multiplexity has been associated with relationship strength and can also comprise overlap of positive and negative network ties. Mutuality/Reciprocity: The extent to which two actors reciprocate each other's friendship or other interaction. Network Closure: A measure of the completeness of relational triads. An individual's assumption of network closure (i.e. that their friends are also friends) is called transitivity. Transitivity is an outcome of the individual or situational trait of Need for Cognitive Closure.
Propinquity In social psychology, propinquity (; from Latin ''propinquitas'', "nearness") is one of the main factors leading to interpersonal attraction. It refers to the physical or psychological proximity between people. Propinquity can mean physical prox ...
: The tendency for actors to have more ties with geographically close others.


Distributions

Bridge A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...
: An individual whose weak ties fill a structural hole, providing the only link between two individuals or clusters. It also includes the shortest route when a longer one is unfeasible due to a high risk of message distortion or delivery failure.
Centrality In graph theory and network analysis, indicators of centrality assign numbers or rankings to nodes within a graph corresponding to their network position. Applications include identifying the most influential person(s) in a social network, key ...
: Centrality refers to a group of metrics that aim to quantify the "importance" or "influence" (in a variety of senses) of a particular node (or group) within a network. Examples of common methods of measuring "centrality" include
betweenness centrality In graph theory, betweenness centrality (or "betweeness centrality") is a measure of centrality in a graph based on shortest paths. For every pair of vertices in a connected graph, there exists at least one shortest path between the vertices such ...
,
closeness centrality In a connected graph, closeness centrality (or closeness) of a node is a measure of centrality in a network, calculated as the reciprocal of the sum of the length of the shortest paths between the node and all other nodes in the graph. Thus, the mo ...
,
eigenvector centrality In graph theory, eigenvector centrality (also called eigencentrality or prestige score) is a measure of the influence of a node in a network. Relative scores are assigned to all nodes in the network based on the concept that connections to high-sco ...
,
alpha centrality In graph theory and social network analysis, alpha centrality is an alternative name for Katz centrality. It is a measure of centrality of nodes within a graph. It is an adaptation of eigenvector centrality with the addition that nodes are imbued ...
, and
degree centrality In graph theory and network theory, network analysis, indicators of centrality assign numbers or rankings to vertex (graph theory), nodes within a graph corresponding to their network position. Applications include identifying the most influent ...
.
Density Density (volumetric mass density or specific mass) is the substance's mass per unit of volume. The symbol most often used for density is ''ρ'' (the lower case Greek letter rho), although the Latin letter ''D'' can also be used. Mathematical ...
: The proportion of direct ties in a network relative to the total number possible. Distance: The minimum number of ties required to connect two particular actors, as popularized by
Stanley Milgram Stanley Milgram (August 15, 1933 – December 20, 1984) was an American social psychologist, best known for his controversial experiments on obedience conducted in the 1960s during his professorship at Yale.Blass, T. (2004). ''The Man Who Shocke ...
's
small world experiment The small-world experiment comprised several experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram and other researchers examining the average path length for social networks of people in the United States. The research was groundbreaking in that it suggest ...
and the idea of 'six degrees of separation'. Structural holes: The absence of ties between two parts of a network. Finding and exploiting a structural hole can give an
entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...
a competitive advantage. This concept was developed by sociologist
Ronald Burt Ronald Stuart Burt (born 1949) is an American sociologist. He is the Charles M. Harper Leadership Professor of Sociology and Strategy at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a Distinguished Professor at Bocconi University. He ...
, and is sometimes referred to as an alternate conception of social capital. Tie Strength: Defined by the linear combination of time, emotional intensity, intimacy and reciprocity (i.e. mutuality). Strong ties are associated with homophily, propinquity and transitivity, while weak ties are associated with bridges.


Segmentation

Groups are identified as '
clique A clique ( AusE, CanE, or ), in the social sciences, is a group of individuals who interact with one another and share similar interests. Interacting with cliques is part of normative social development regardless of gender, ethnicity, or popular ...
s' if every individual is directly tied to every other individual, '
social circle In the social sciences, a social group can be defined as two or more people who interact with one another, share similar characteristics, and collectively have a sense of unity. Regardless, social groups come in a myriad of sizes and varieties ...
s' if there is less stringency of direct contact, which is imprecise, or as structurally cohesive blocks if precision is wanted.
Clustering coefficient In graph theory, a clustering coefficient is a measure of the degree to which nodes in a graph tend to cluster together. Evidence suggests that in most real-world networks, and in particular social networks, nodes tend to create tightly knit groups ...
: A measure of the likelihood that two associates of a node are associates. A higher clustering coefficient indicates a greater 'cliquishness'. Cohesion: The degree to which actors are connected directly to each other by cohesive bonds.
Structural cohesion In sociology, structural cohesion is the conception of a useful formal definition and measure of cohesion in social groups. It is defined as the minimal number of actors in a social network that need to be removed to disconnect the group. It is ...
refers to the minimum number of members who, if removed from a group, would disconnect the group.


Modelling and visualization of networks

Visual representation of social networks is important to understand the network data and convey the result of the analysis. Numerous methods of visualization for data produced by social network analysis have been presented. Many of the analytic software have modules for network visualization. Exploration of the data is done through displaying nodes and ties in various layouts, and attributing colors, size and other advanced properties to nodes. Visual representations of networks may be a powerful method for conveying complex information, but care should be taken in interpreting node and graph properties from visual displays alone, as they may misrepresent structural properties better captured through quantitative analyses.
Signed graph In the area of graph theory in mathematics, a signed graph is a graph in which each edge has a positive or negative sign. A signed graph is balanced if the product of edge signs around every cycle is positive. The name "signed graph" and the no ...
s can be used to illustrate good and bad relationships between humans. A positive edge between two nodes denotes a positive relationship (friendship, alliance, dating) and a negative edge between two nodes denotes a negative relationship (hatred, anger). Signed social network graphs can be used to predict the future evolution of the graph. In signed social networks, there is the concept of "balanced" and "unbalanced" cycles. A balanced cycle is defined as a cycle where the product of all the signs are positive. According to
balance theory In the psychology of motivation, balance theory is a theory of attitude change, proposed by Fritz Heider. It conceptualizes the cognitive consistency motive as a drive toward psychological balance. The consistency motive is the urge to maintain o ...
, balanced graphs represent a group of people who are unlikely to change their opinions of the other people in the group. Unbalanced graphs represent a group of people who are very likely to change their opinions of the people in their group. For example, a group of 3 people (A, B, and C) where A and B have a positive relationship, B and C have a positive relationship, but C and A have a negative relationship is an unbalanced cycle. This group is very likely to morph into a balanced cycle, such as one where B only has a good relationship with A, and both A and B have a negative relationship with C. By using the concept of balanced and unbalanced cycles, the evolution of signed
social network graph A sociogram is a graphic representation of social links that a person has. It is a graph drawing that plots the structure of interpersonal relations in a group situation. Overview Sociograms were developed by Jacob L. Moreno to analyze choice ...
s can be predicted. Especially when using social network analysis as a tool for facilitating change, different approaches of participatory network mapping have proven useful. Here participants / interviewers provide network data by actually mapping out the network (with pen and paper or digitally) during the data collection session. An example of a pen-and-paper network mapping approach, which also includes the collection of some actor attributes (perceived influence and goals of actors) is the *
Net-map toolbox The net-map toolbox is a social network analysis tool that uses interviews and mapping to help people understand, visualize, discuss, and improve situations in which many different actors influence outcomes. Social network analysis is a research ap ...
. One benefit of this approach is that it allows researchers to collect qualitative data and ask clarifying questions while the network data is collected.


Social networking potential

Social Networking Potential (SNP) is a numeric
coefficient In mathematics, a coefficient is a multiplicative factor in some term of a polynomial, a series, or an expression; it is usually a number, but may be any expression (including variables such as , and ). When the coefficients are themselves var ...
, derived through
algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specificat ...
s to represent both the size of an individual's
social network A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...
and their ability to influence that network. SNP coefficients were first defined and used by Bob Gerstley in 2002. A closely related term is Alpha User, defined as a person with a high SNP. SNP coefficients have two primary functions: # The
classification Classification is a process related to categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated and understood. Classification is the grouping of related facts into classes. It may also refer to: Business, organizat ...
of individuals based on their social networking potential, and # The weighting of
respondents {{unreferenced, date=February 2012 A respondent is a person who is called upon to issue a response to a communication made by another. The term is used in legal contexts, in survey methodology, and in psychological conditioning. Legal usage In ...
in quantitative
marketing research Marketing research is the systematic gathering, recording, and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data about issues relating to marketing products and services. The goal is to identify and assess how changing elements of the marketing mix i ...
studies. By calculating the SNP of respondents and by targeting High SNP respondents, the
strength Strength may refer to: Physical strength *Physical strength, as in people or animals * Hysterical strength, extreme strength occurring when people are in life-and-death situations *Superhuman strength, great physical strength far above human c ...
and
relevance Relevance is the concept of one topic being connected to another topic in a way that makes it useful to consider the second topic when considering the first. The concept of relevance is studied in many different fields, including cognitive sci ...
of quantitative marketing research used to drive
viral marketing Viral marketing is a business strategy that uses existing social networks to promote a product mainly on various social media platforms. Its name refers to how consumers spread information about a product with other people, much in the same way tha ...
strategies is enhanced. Variables used to calculate an individual's SNP include but are not limited to: participation in Social Networking activities, group memberships, leadership roles, recognition, publication/editing/contributing to non-electronic media, publication/editing/contributing to electronic media (websites, blogs), and frequency of past distribution of information within their network. The acronym "SNP" and some of the first algorithms developed to quantify an individual's social networking potential were described in the white paper "Advertising Research is Changing" (Gerstley, 2003) See
Viral Marketing Viral marketing is a business strategy that uses existing social networks to promote a product mainly on various social media platforms. Its name refers to how consumers spread information about a product with other people, much in the same way tha ...
. The first book to discuss the commercial use of Alpha Users among mobile telecoms audiences was 3G Marketing by Ahonen, Kasper and Melkko in 2004. The first book to discuss Alpha Users more generally in the context of
social marketing intelligence Social marketing intelligence is the method of extrapolating valuable information from social network interactions and data flows that can enable companies to launch new products and services into the market at greater speed and lower cost. This ...
was Communities Dominate Brands by Ahonen & Moore in 2005. In 2012, Nicola Greco ( UCL) presents at
TEDx TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". TED was founded by Richard Sau ...
the Social Networking Potential as a parallelism to the
potential energy In physics, potential energy is the energy held by an object because of its position relative to other objects, stresses within itself, its electric charge, or other factors. Common types of potential energy include the gravitational potentia ...
that users generate and companies should use, stating that "SNP is the new asset that every company should aim to have".


Practical applications

Social network analysis is used extensively in a wide range of applications and disciplines. Some common network analysis applications include data aggregation and
mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic via ...
, network propagation modeling, network modeling and sampling, user attribute and behavior analysis, community-maintained resource support, location-based interaction analysis, social sharing and filtering,
recommender system A recommender system, or a recommendation system (sometimes replacing 'system' with a synonym such as platform or engine), is a subclass of information filtering system that provide suggestions for items that are most pertinent to a particular u ...
s development, and link prediction and entity resolution. In the private sector, businesses use social network analysis to support activities such as customer interaction and analysis,
information system An information system (IS) is a formal, sociotechnical, organizational system designed to collect, process, store, and distribute information. From a sociotechnical perspective, information systems are composed by four components: task, people ...
development analysis, marketing, and
business intelligence Business intelligence (BI) comprises the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of business intelligence technologies include reporting, online analytical pr ...
needs (see
social media analytics Social media analytics is the process of gathering and analyzing data from social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Twitter. A part of social media analytics is called social media monitoring or social listening. It is commonly ...
). Some public sector uses include development of leader engagement strategies, analysis of individual and group engagement and media use, and community-based problem solving.


Security applications

Social network analysis is also used in intelligence,
counter-intelligence Counterintelligence is an activity aimed at protecting an agency's intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering information and conducting activities to prevent espionage, sabotage, assassinations or ot ...
and
law enforcement Law enforcement is the activity of some members of government who act in an organized manner to enforce the law by discovering, deterring, rehabilitating, or punishing people who violate the rules and norms governing that society. The term en ...
activities. This technique allows the analysts to map covert organizations such as an
espionage Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangibl ...
ring, an organized crime family or a street gang. The
National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...
(NSA) uses its electronic surveillance programs to generate the data needed to perform this type of analysis on terrorist cells and other networks deemed relevant to national security. The NSA looks up to three nodes deep during this network analysis. After the initial mapping of the social network is complete, analysis is performed to determine the structure of the network and determine, for example, the leaders within the network. This allows military or law enforcement assets to launch capture-or-kill decapitation attacks on the
high-value targets In United States military terminology, a high-value target (HVT) is the term given to a person or resource that an enemy commander requires to complete a mission. The term has been widely used in the news media for Osama Bin Laden and high-ranking ...
in leadership positions to disrupt the functioning of the network. The NSA has been performing social network analysis on
call detail record A call detail record (CDR) is a data record produced by a telephone exchange or other telecommunications equipment that documents the details of a telephone call or other telecommunications transactions (e.g., text message) that passes through that ...
s (CDRs), also known as
metadata Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...
, since shortly after the
September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...
.


Textual analysis applications

Large textual corpora can be turned into networks and then analysed with the method of social network analysis. In these networks, the nodes are Social Actors, and the links are Actions. The extraction of these networks can be automated by using parsers. The resulting networks, which can contain thousands of nodes, are then analysed by using tools from network theory to identify the key actors, the key communities or parties, and general properties such as robustness or structural stability of the overall network, or centrality of certain nodes. This automates the approach introduced by Quantitative Narrative Analysis, whereby subject-verb-object triplets are identified with pairs of actors linked by an action, or pairs formed by actor-object. In other approaches, textual analysis is carried out considering the network of words co-occurring in a text. In these networks, nodes are words and links among them are weighted based on their frequency of co-occurrence (within a specific maximum range).


Internet applications

Social network analysis has also been applied to understanding online behavior by individuals, organizations, and between websites. Hyperlink analysis can be used to analyze the connections between
website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google Search, Google, Facebook, Amaz ...
s or webpages to examine how information flows as individuals navigate the web. The connections between organizations has been analyzed via hyperlink analysis to examine which organizations within an issue community.


Netocracy

Another concept that has emerged from this connection between social network theory and the Internet is the concept of
netocracy Netocracy was a term invented by the editorial board of the American technology magazine ''Wired'' in the early 1990s. A portmanteau of ''Internet'' and ''aristocracy'', ''netocracy'' refers to a perceived global upper-class that bases its power ...
, where several authors have emerged studying the correlation between the extended use of online social networks, and changes in social power dynamics.


Social media internet applications

Social network analysis has been applied to social media as a tool to understand behavior between individuals or organizations through their linkages on social media websites such as
Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
and
Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
.


In computer-supported collaborative learning

One of the most current methods of the application of SNA is to the study of
computer-supported collaborative learning Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) is a pedagogical approach wherein learning takes place via social interaction using a computer or through the Internet. This kind of learning is characterized by the sharing and construction of kno ...
(CSCL). When applied to CSCL, SNA is used to help understand how learners collaborate in terms of amount, frequency, and length, as well as the quality, topic, and strategies of communication. Additionally, SNA can focus on specific aspects of the network connection, or the entire network as a whole. It uses graphical representations, written representations, and data representations to help examine the connections within a CSCL network. When applying SNA to a CSCL environment the interactions of the participants are treated as a social network. The focus of the analysis is on the "connections" made among the participants – how they interact and communicate – as opposed to how each participant behaved on his or her own.


Key terms

There are several key terms associated with social network analysis research in computer-supported collaborative learning such as: density, centrality, indegree, outdegree, and sociogram. * Density refers to the "connections" between participants. Density is defined as the number of connections a participant has, divided by the total possible connections a participant could have. For example, if there are 20 people participating, each person could potentially connect to 19 other people. A density of 100% (19/19) is the greatest density in the system. A density of 5% indicates there is only 1 of 19 possible connections. * Centrality focuses on the behavior of individual participants within a network. It measures the extent to which an individual interacts with other individuals in the network. The more an individual connects to others in a network, the greater their centrality in the network. In-degree and out-degree variables are related to centrality. * In-degree centrality concentrates on a specific individual as the point of focus; centrality of all other individuals is based on their relation to the focal point of the "in-degree" individual. * Out-degree is a measure of centrality that still focuses on a single individual, but the analytic is concerned with the out-going interactions of the individual; the measure of out-degree centrality is how many times the focus point individual interacts with others. * A sociogram is a visualization with defined boundaries of connections in the network. For example, a sociogram which shows out-degree centrality points for Participant A would illustrate all outgoing connections Participant A made in the studied network.


Unique capabilities

Researchers employ social network analysis in the study of computer-supported collaborative learning in part due to the unique capabilities it offers. This particular method allows the study of interaction patterns within a networked learning community and can help illustrate the extent of the participants' interactions with the other members of the group. The graphics created using SNA tools provide visualizations of the connections among participants and the strategies used to communicate within the group. Some authors also suggest that SNA provides a method of easily analyzing changes in participatory patterns of members over time. A number of research studies have applied SNA to CSCL across a variety of contexts. The findings include the correlation between a network's density and the teacher's presence, a greater regard for the recommendations of "central" participants, infrequency of cross-gender interaction in a network, and the relatively small role played by an instructor in an
asynchronous learning Asynchronous learning is a general term used to describe forms of education, instruction, and learning that do not occur in the same place or at the same time. It uses resources that facilitate information sharing outside the constraints of time an ...
network.


Other methods used alongside SNA

Although many studies have demonstrated the value of social network analysis within the computer-supported collaborative learning field, researchers have suggested that SNA by itself is not enough for achieving a full understanding of CSCL. The complexity of the interaction processes and the myriad sources of data make it difficult for SNA to provide an in-depth analysis of CSCL. Researchers indicate that SNA needs to be complemented with other methods of analysis to form a more accurate picture of collaborative learning experiences. A number of research studies have combined other types of analysis with SNA in the study of CSCL. This can be referred to as a multi-method approach or data
triangulation In trigonometry and geometry, triangulation is the process of determining the location of a point by forming triangles to the point from known points. Applications In surveying Specifically in surveying, triangulation involves only angle me ...
, which will lead to an increase of evaluation
reliability Reliability, reliable, or unreliable may refer to: Science, technology, and mathematics Computing * Data reliability (disambiguation), a property of some disk arrays in computer storage * High availability * Reliability (computer networking), a ...
in CSCL studies. * Qualitative method – The principles of qualitative case study research constitute a solid framework for the integration of SNA methods in the study of CSCL experiences. ** ''
Ethnographic Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...
data'' such as student questionnaires and interviews and classroom non-participant observations ** ''
Case studies A case study is an in-depth, detailed examination of a particular case (or cases) within a real-world context. For example, case studies in medicine may focus on an individual patient or ailment; case studies in business might cover a particular fi ...
'': comprehensively study particular CSCL situations and relate findings to general schemes ** ''
Content analysis Content analysis is the study of documents and communication artifacts, which might be texts of various formats, pictures, audio or video. Social scientists use content analysis to examine patterns in communication in a replicable and systematic ...
:'' offers information about the content of the communication among members * Quantitative method – This includes simple descriptive statistical analyses on occurrences to identify particular attitudes of group members who have not been able to be tracked via SNA in order to detect general tendencies. ** ''Computer
log files In computing, logging is the act of keeping a log of events that occur in a computer system, such as problems, errors or just information on current operations. These events may occur in the operating system or in other software. A message or l ...
:'' provide automatic data on how collaborative tools are used by learners ** '' Multidimensional scaling (MDS)'': charts similarities among actors, so that more similar input data is closer together ** ''
Software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
tools:'' QUEST, SAMSA (System for Adjacency Matrix and Sociogram-based Analysis), and Nud*IST


See also

* Actor-network theory *
Attention inequality Attention is the behavioral and cognitive process of selectively concentrating on a discrete aspect of information, whether considered subjective or objective, while ignoring other perceivable information. William James (1890) wrote that "Atte ...
*
Blockmodeling Blockmodeling is a set or a coherent framework, that is used for analyzing social structure and also for setting procedure(s) for partitioning (clustering) social network's units ( nodes, vertices, actors), based on specific patterns, which form ...
*
Community structure In the study of complex networks, a network is said to have community structure if the nodes of the network can be easily grouped into (potentially overlapping) sets of nodes such that each set of nodes is densely connected internally. In the part ...
*
Complex network In the context of network theory, a complex network is a graph (network) with non-trivial topological features—features that do not occur in simple networks such as lattices or random graphs but often occur in networks representing real s ...
*
Digital humanities Digital humanities (DH) is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or Information technology, digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanitie ...
* Dynamic network analysis * Friendship paradox *
Individual mobility Individual human mobility is the study that describes how individual humans move within a network or system. The concept has been studied in a number of fields originating in the study of demographics. Understanding human mobility has many appli ...
*
Influence-for-hire Influence-for-hire or collective influence, refers to the economy that has emerged around buying and selling influence on social media platforms. Overview Companies that engage in the influence-for-hire industry range from content farms to high ...
*
Mathematical sociology Mathematical sociology or the sociology of mathematics is an interdisciplinary field of research concerned both with the use of mathematics within sociological research as well as research into the relationships that exist between maths and socie ...
*
Metcalfe's law Metcalfe's law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (''n''2). First formulated in this form by George Gilder in 1993, and attributed to Robert Metcalf ...
*
Netocracy Netocracy was a term invented by the editorial board of the American technology magazine ''Wired'' in the early 1990s. A portmanteau of ''Internet'' and ''aristocracy'', ''netocracy'' refers to a perceived global upper-class that bases its power ...
* Network-based diffusion analysis *
Network science Network science is an academic field which studies complex networks such as telecommunication networks, computer networks, biological networks, cognitive and semantic networks, and social networks, considering distinct elements or actors repre ...
* Organizational patterns *
Small world phenomenon The small-world experiment comprised several experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram and other researchers examining the average path length for social networks of people in the United States. The research was groundbreaking in that it suggeste ...
*
Social media analytics Social media analytics is the process of gathering and analyzing data from social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Twitter. A part of social media analytics is called social media monitoring or social listening. It is commonly ...
*
Social media intelligence Social media intelligence (SMI or SOCMINT) refers to the collective tools and solutions that allow organizations to analyze conversations, respond to social signals and synthesize social data points into meaningful trends and analysis, based on the ...
* Social media mining *
Social network A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...
*
Social network analysis software Social network analysis software (SNA software) is software which facilitates quantitative or qualitative analysis of social networks, by describing features of a network either through numerical or visual representation. Overview Networks can ...
*
Social networking service A social networking service or SNS (sometimes called a social networking site) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, act ...
*
Social software Social software, also known as social apps or social platform, include communications and interactive tools that are often based on the Internet. Communication tools typically handle the capturing, storing and presentation of communication, usua ...
*
Social web The social web is a set of social relations that link people through the World Wide Web. The social web encompasses how websites and software are designed and developed in order to support and foster social interaction. These online social inte ...
*
Sociomapping Sociomapping is a method developed for processing and visualization of relational data (e.g. social network data). It is most commonly used for mapping the social structure within small teams (10-25 people). Sociomapping uses the landscape metaphor ...
* Virtual collective consciousness


References


Further reading


Introduction to Stochastic Actor-Based Models for Network Dynamics - Snijders et al.

Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems (CASOS) at Carnegie Mellon


* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20080215084223/http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/netgov/ Program on Networked Governance Harvard University
Historical Dynamics in a time of Crisis: Late Byzantium, 1204–1453 (a discussion of social network analysis from the point of view of historical studies)

Social Network Analysis: A Systematic Approach for Investigating
*
Networks, Crowds, and Markets
' (2010) by D. Easley & J. Kleinberg *
Introduction to Social Networks Methods
' (2005) by R. Hanneman & M. Riddle *

' (2013) by I. McCulloh, H. Armstrong & A. Johnson


External links


International Network for Social Network Analysis

Awesome Network Analysis
- 200+ links to books, conferences, courses, journals, research groups, software, tutorials and more
Netwiki
- wiki page devoted to social networks; maintained at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill {{DEFAULTSORT:Social Network Social networks Value (ethics) Systems theory Social systems Self-organization Community building Cultural economics Social information processing Mass media monitoring Surveillance Types of analytics Methods in sociology Internet culture