Social network analysis

Social Network Analysis is a new conceptual and methodological perspective for the study of social groups. Although the foundational ideas emerged around 1930, it was not until 1970 when it started to appear as an interdisciplinary science, in parallel to the development of new theories and the generalization of computers. From then on, it has experienced a fast development, and it has been applied to studies in very diverse domains, such as organizational sciences, medicine, politics, information flow in Internet, complex systems and more recently, to the analysis of the social networking phenomena.

Besides this, SNA is based on formal methods expressed in mathematical terms. This means that it is well suited to be applied by automatic methods and tools. In fact, the construction of tools that exploit this potential to support evaluation or regulation is a research topic in itself in our community.

• path
• distance
• diameter
• density
• cliques
• clusters

• centrality
• betweenness
• cohesion
• multiplexity

• social capital
• coalitions
• collaboration patterns
• the strength of the weak ties

(from Reffay et al (2011). Introduction to Social Network Analysis Theory and Its Application to CSCL. CSCL 2011)

• Pajek OSS, SNA