Social Network Analysis (SNA)

Social Network Analysis (SNA) is focussed on the structure of relationships among actors (Hanneman & Riddle,2005). SNA maps and measures formal and informal relationships to understand what facilitates or impedes the knowledge flows that bind interacting actors, departments, organisations or other entities.

SNA is a method with increasing application in the social sciences and has been applied in areas as diverse as psychology, health, business organisation, and electronic communications. More recently, interest has grown in analysis of social media to understand social networks (Scott 1988). Visualising the interorganisational network by social network analysis enable the government and policy makers to describe and analyse interactions among actors. There is good tool support such as NodeXL (Hansen, Shneiderman & Smith, 2011).

Related terms: Social Network, Social Media

    References:

    Hanneman, R. A., & Riddle, M. (2005). Introduction to Social Network Methods. from http://faculty.ucr.edu/~hanneman/nettext/Introduction_to_Social_Network_Methods.pdf

    Hansen, D. L., Shneiderman, B., & Smith, M. A. (2011). Analyzing socila media network swith NodeXL. Insigths from a connected world. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

    Scott, J. (1988), Social Network Analysis, Sociology (22:1) February 1, 1988, pp 109-127.


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