Introduction to social network analysis
Social network analysis (SNA) can be used to analyse patterns of information and knowledge flow, enabling the identification of individuals playing important structural roles within a network, such as bottlenecks and boundary spanners, as well as subgroups such as cliques.
- Louise Cooke's session at DREaM event 2 on 25 October gave a useful introduction to SNA theory. The session page includes slides and video (embedded below), as well as a summary:
DREaM event 2: Introduction to social network analysisDr Cooke provided a taster of what she intends to cover in this presentation in her pre-event interview post, which also includes a useful list of background reading materials. Please use the event hashtag #lis_dream2 to follow discussion around this event as it happens via Twitter.- The bulk of the livetweeting action can be found in the session summary, but there is surely room for something a little gratuitous:
Six degrees of separation research ...Kevin Bacon example tinyurl.com/njwbn Used to use this in teaching! #lis_dream2- Collecting the data
Cooke: When you get to the maths, most people decide they don't want to do social network analysis #lis_dream2- The good news is that SNA is not all about maths or noodling with Google spreadsheets - data collection is only the first stage. An analysis of workshop participants was undertaken as part of the session, which it is planned to repeat at the end of the project to help assess impact.
- For online participants: we have been asked to indicate whether we're aware of the knowledge/expertise of others in the room #lis_dream2
- We have also been asked to indicate if we have had direct acquaintance with individuals in the room prior to the workshop #lis_dream2
- Interpreting the results
#lis_dream2 the key with SNA is an accurate interpretation of the meaning behind the data- #lis_dream2 SNA analysis would need to be interpreted through a qualitative study
- Initial findings from the workshop exercise were that the network was fairly well connected, with 20 cliques/clusters. The acquaintanceship network was slightly more connected than the knowledge and expertise network:
- A couple of further examples:
- Hall: Cliques can be positive things. Cooke agrees this can show a well knit network who work together #lis_dream2
- Ooh! Networks at Sheffield & Loughborough... only shared nodes were real world, not research. Improves after f2f in workshops #lis_dream2
- The truly awesome work by @mhawksey now slots into place - time to give the googledocery another go to get closer to the interesting stuff:
Visualising the #ili2011 Twitter archive « MASHeOver on UK Web Focus Brian Kelly has posted What Twitter Told Us About ILI 2011which gives a breakdown of twitter statistics the recent I...
