A 

social network is a social structure made up of individuals (or organizations) called "nodes", which are tied (connected)

by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship,kinship, common interest, financial exchange,

dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.

Social network analysis views social relationships in terms ofnetwork theory consisting of nodes and ties (also

called edges,links, or connections). Nodes are the individual actors within the networks, and ties are the relationships

between the actors. The resulting graph-based structures are often very complex. There can be many kinds of ties between

the nodes. Research in a number of academic fields has shown that social networks operate on many levels, from families

up to the level of nations, and play a critical role in determining the way problems are solved, organizations are run, and the

degree to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals.

In its simplest form, a social network is a map of specified ties, such as friendship, between the nodes being studied. The

nodes to which an individual is thus connected are the social contacts of that individual. The network can also be used to

measure social capital – the value that an individual gets from the social network. These concepts are often displayed in a

social network diagram, where nodes are the points and ties are the lines.

Social network analysis

An example of a social network diagram. The node with the highest betweenness centrality is marked in yellow.
Social network analysis (related to network theory) has emerged as a key technique in modern sociology. It has also gained

a significant following in anthropology, biology,communication studies, economics,geography, information

science,organizational studies, social psychology, and sociolinguistics, and has become a popular topic of speculation and

study.

People have used the idea of "social network" loosely for over a century to connote complex sets of relationships between

members of social systems at all scales, from interpersonal to international. In 1954, J. A. Barnes 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 (e.g., tribes, families) and social categories (e.g., gender, ethnicity). Scholars such as S.D.

Berkowitz, Stephen Borgatti, Ronald Burt, Kathleen Carley, Martin Everett, Katherine Faust, Linton Freeman, Mark

Granovetter, David Knoke, David Krackhardt, Peter Marsden, Nicholas Mullins, Anatol Rapoport, Stanley Wasserman, Barry

Wellman,Douglas R. White, and Harrison White expanded the use of systematic social network analysis.[1]

Social network analysis has now moved from being a suggestive metaphor to an analytic approach to a paradigm, with its

own theoretical statements, methods, social network analysis software, and researchers. Analysts reason from whole to

part; from structure to relation to individual; from behavior to attitude. They typically either study whole networks (also known

as complete networks), all of the ties containing specified relations in a defined population, or personal networks (also

known asegocentric networks), the ties that specified people have, such as their "personal communities".[2] In the latter case,

the ties are said to go from egos, who are the focal actors who are being analyzed, to their alters. The distinction between

whole/complete networks and personal/egocentric networks has depended largely on how analysts were able to gather

data. That is, for groups such as companies, schools, or membership societies, the analyst was expected to have complete

information about who was in the network, all participants being both potential egos and alters. Personal/egocentric studies

were typically conducted when identities of egos were known, but not their alters. These studies rely on the egos to provide

information about the identities of alters and there is no expectation that the various egos or sets of alters will be tied to each

other. A snowball network refers to the idea that the alters identified in an egocentric survey then become egos themselves

and are able in turn to nominate additional alters. While there are severe logistic limits to conducting snowball network

studies, a method for examining hybrid networks has recently been developed in which egos in complete networks can

nominate alters otherwise not listed who are then available for all subsequent egos to see.[3] The hybrid network may be

valuable for examining whole/complete networks that are expected to include important players beyond those who are

formally identified. For example, employees of a company often work with non-company consultants who may be part of a

network that cannot fully be defined prior to data collection.

Several analytic tendencies distinguish social network analysis:[4]

There is no assumption that groups are the building blocks of society: the approach is open to studying less-

bounded social systems, from nonlocal communities to links among websites.

Rather than treating individuals (persons, organizations, states) as discrete units of analysis, it focuses on how the

structure of ties affects individuals and their relationships.

In contrast to analyses that assume that socialization into norms determines behavior, network analysis looks to

see the extent to which the structure and composition of ties affect norms.

The shape of a social network helps determine a network's usefulness to its individuals. Smaller, tighter

networks can be less useful to their members than networks with lots of loose connections (weak ties) to

individuals outside the main network. More open networks, with many weak ties and social connections,

are more likely to introduce new ideas and opportunities to their members than closed networks with

many redundant ties. In other words, a group of friends who only do things with each other already share

the same knowledge and opportunities. A group of individuals with connections to other social worlds is

likely to have access to a wider range of information. It is better for individual success to have

connections to a variety of networks rather than many connections within a single network. Similarly,

individuals can exercise influence or act as brokers within their social networks by bridging two networks

that are not directly linked (called filling structural holes).[5]

The power of social network analysis stems from its difference from traditional social scientific studies,

which assume that it is the attributes of individual actors—whether they are friendly or unfriendly, smart

or dumb, etc.—that matter. Social network analysis produces an alternate view, where the attributes of

individuals are less important than their relationships and ties with other actors within the network. This

approach has turned out to be useful for explaining many real-world phenomena, but leaves less room

for individual agency, the ability for individuals to influence their success, because so much of it rests

within the structure of their network.

Social networks have also been used to examine how organizations interact with each other,

characterizing the many informal connections that link executives together, as well as associations and

connections between individual employees at different organizations. For example, power within

organizations often comes more from the degree to which an individual within a network is at the center

of many relationships than actual job title. Social networks also play a key role in hiring, in business

success, and in job performance. Networks provide ways for companies to gather information, deter

competition, and collude in setting prices or policies.[6]

History of social network analysis

A summary of the progress of social networks and social network analysis has been written by Linton

Freeman.[7]

Precursors of social networks in the late 1800s include Émile Durkheim and Ferdinand Tönnies. Tönnies

argued that social groups can exist as personal and direct social ties that either link individuals who share

values and belief (gemeinschaft) or impersonal, formal, and instrumental social links (gesellschaft).

Durkheim gave a non-individualistic explanation of social facts arguing that social phenomena arise when

interacting individuals constitute a reality that can no longer be accounted for in terms of the properties of
individual actors. He distinguished between a traditional society – "mechanical solidarity" – which prevails

if individual differences are minimized, and the modern society – "organic solidarity" – that develops out

of cooperation between differentiated individuals with independent roles.

Georg Simmel, writing at the turn of the twentieth century, was the first scholar to think directly in social

network terms. His essays pointed to the nature of network size on interaction and to the likelihood of

interaction in ramified, loosely-knit networks rather than groups (Simmel, 1908/1971).

After a hiatus in the first decades of the twentieth century, three main traditions in social networks

appeared. In the 1930s, J.L. Moreno pioneered the systematic recording and analysis of social

interaction in small groups, especially classrooms and work groups (sociometry), while a Harvardgroup

led by W. Lloyd Warner and Elton Mayo explored interpersonal relations at work. In 1940, A.R.Radcliffe-

Brown's presidential address to British anthropologists urged the systematic study of networks.
[8]
 However, it took about 15 years before this call was followed-up systematically.

Social network analysis developed with the kinship studies of Elizabeth Bott in England in the 1950s and

the 1950s–1960s urbanization studies of the University of Manchester group of anthropologists (centered

around Max Gluckman and later J. Clyde Mitchell) investigating community networks in southern Africa,

India and the United Kingdom. Concomitantly, British anthropologist S.F. Nadelcodified a theory of social

structure that was influential in later network analysis.[9]

In the 1960s-1970s, a growing number of scholars worked to combine the different tracks and traditions.

One group was centered around Harrison White and his students at the Harvard University Department

of Social Relations: Ivan Chase, Bonnie Erickson, Harriet Friedmann, Mark Granovetter, Nancy Howell,

Joel Levine, Nicholas Mullins, John Padgett, Michael Schwartz and Barry Wellman. Also independently

active in the Harvard Social Relations department at the time were Charles Tilly, who focused on

networks in political and community sociology and social movements, and Stanley Milgram, who

developed the "six degrees of separation" thesis.[10] Mark Granovetter and Barry Wellman are among the

former students of White who have elaborated and popularized social network analysis.[11]

Significant independent work was also done by scholars elsewhere: University of California Irvine social

scientists interested in mathematical applications, centered around Linton Freeman, including John Boyd,

Susan Freeman, Kathryn Faust, A. Kimball Romney and Douglas White; quantitative analysts at

the University of Chicago, including Joseph Galaskiewicz, Wendy Griswold, Edward Laumann, Peter

Marsden, Martina Morris, and John Padgett; and communication scholars at Michigan State University,

including Nan Lin and Everett Rogers. A substantively-oriented University of Torontosociology group

developed in the 1970s, centered on former students of Harrison White: S.D. Berkowitz, Harriet

Friedmann, Nancy Leslie Howard, Nancy Howell, Lorne Tepperman and Barry Wellman, and also

including noted modeler and game theorist Anatol Rapoport.In terms of theory, it critiqued methodological
individualism and group-based analyses, arguing that seeing the world as social networks offered more

analytic leverage.[12]

Research

Social network analysis has been used in epidemiology to help understand how patterns of human

contact aid or inhibit the spread of diseases such as HIV in a population. The evolution of social networks

can sometimes be modeled by the use of agent based models, providing insight into the interplay

between communication rules, rumor spreading and social structure.

SNA may also be an effective tool for mass surveillance – for example the Total Information

Awarenessprogram was doing in-depth research on strategies to analyze social networks to determine

whether or not U.S. citizens were political threats.

Diffusion of innovations theory explores social networks and their role in influencing the spread of new

ideas and practices. Change agents and opinion leaders often play major roles in spurring the adoption

of innovations, although factors inherent to the innovations also play a role.

Robin Dunbar has suggested that the typical size of an egocentric network is constrained to about 150

members due to possible limits in the capacity of the human communication channel. The rule arises

from cross-cultural studies in sociology and especially anthropology of the maximum size of a village(in

modern parlance most reasonably understood as an ecovillage). It is theorized in evolutionary

psychology that the number may be some kind of limit of average human ability to recognize members

and track emotional facts about all members of a group. However, it may be due to economics and the

need to track "free riders", as it may be easier in larger groups to take advantage of the benefits of living

in a community without contributing to those benefits.

Mark Granovetter found in one study that more numerous weak ties can be important in seeking

information and innovation. Cliques have a tendency to have more homogeneous opinions as well as

share many common traits. This homophilic tendency was the reason for the members of the cliques to

be attracted together in the first place. However, being similar, each member of the clique would also

know more or less what the other members knew. To find new information or insights, members of the

clique will have to look beyond the clique to its other friends and acquaintances. This is what Granovetter

called "the strength of weak ties".

Guanxi (关系）is a central concept in Chinese society (and other East Asian cultures) that can be

summarized as the use of personal influence. It is loosely analogous to "clout" or "pull" in the West.

Guanxi can be studied from a social network approach.[13]

The small world phenomenon is the hypothesis that the chain of social acquaintances required to

connect one arbitrary person to another arbitrary person anywhere in the world is generally short. The
concept gave rise to the famous phrase six degrees of separation after a 1967 small world experimentby

psychologist Stanley Milgram. In Milgram's experiment, a sample of US individuals were asked to reach a

particular target person by passing a message along a chain of acquaintances. The average length of

successful chains turned out to be about five intermediaries or six separation steps (the majority of

chains in that study actually failed to complete). The methods (and ethics as well) of Milgram's

experiment were later questioned by an American scholar, and some further research to replicate

Milgram's findings found that the degrees of connection needed could be higher.[14]Academic researchers

continue to explore this phenomenon as Internet-based communication technology has supplemented

the phone and postal systems available during the times of Milgram. A recent electronic small world

experiment at Columbia University found that about five to seven degrees of separation are sufficient for

connecting any two people through e-mail.[15]

Collaboration graphs 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. 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 balances and unbalanced cycles, the evolution ofsigned social network

graphs can be predicted.

One study has found that happiness tends to be correlated in social networks. When a person is happy,

nearby friends have a 25 percent higher chance of being happy themselves. Furthermore, people at the

center of a social network tend to become happier in the future than those at the periphery. Clusters of

happy and unhappy people were discerned within the studied networks, with a reach of three degrees of

separation: a person's happiness was associated with the level of happiness of their friends' friends'

friends.[16] (See also Emotional contagion.)

Some researchers have suggested that human social networks may have a genetic basis.[17] Using a

sample of twins from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, they found that in-degree (the

number of times a person is named as a friend), transitivity (the probability that two friends are friends

with one another), and betweenness centrality (the number of paths in the network that pass through a

given person) are all significantly heritable. Existing models of network formation cannot account for this
 intrinsic node variation, so the researchers propose an alternative "Attract and Introduce" model that can

explain heritability and many other features of human social networks.[18]

Metrics (measures) in social network analysis

Betweenness

The extent to which a node lies between other nodes in the network. This measure takes into account the

connectivity of the node's neighbors, giving a higher value for nodes which bridge clusters. The measure reflects

the number of people who a person is connecting indirectly through their direct links.[19]
Bridge

An edge is said to be a bridge if deleting it would cause its endpoints to lie in different components of a graph.
Centrality

This measure gives a rough indication of the social power of a node based on how well they "connect" the network.

"Betweenness", "Closeness", and "Degree" are all measures of centrality.

Centralization

The difference between the number of links for each node divided by maximum possible sum of differences. A

centralized network will have many of its links dispersed around one or a few nodes, while a decentralized network

is one in which there is little variation between the number of links each node possesses.
Closeness

The degree an individual is near all other individuals in a network (directly or indirectly). It reflects the ability to

access information through the "grapevine" of network members. Thus, closeness is the inverse of the sum of the

shortest distances between each individual and every other person in the network. (See also: Proxemics) The

shortest path may also be known as the "geodesic distance".

Clustering coefficient

A measure of the likelihood that two associates of a node are associates themselves. A higher clustering

coefficient indicates a greater 'cliquishness'.

Cohesion

The degree to which actors are connected directly to each other by cohesive bonds. Groups are identified as

‘cliques’ if every individual is directly tied to every other individual, ‘social circles’ if there is less stringency of direct

contact, which is imprecise, or as structurally cohesive blocks if precision is wanted.[20]

Degree

The count of the number of ties to other actors in the network. See also degree (graph theory).
(Individual-level) Density

The degree a respondent's ties know one another/ proportion of ties among an individual's nominees. Network or

global-level density is the proportion of ties in a network relative to the total number possible (sparse versus dense

networks).
Flow betweenness centrality

The degree that a node contributes to sum of maximum flow between all pairs of nodes (not that node).
Eigenvector centrality
A measure of the importance of a node in a network. It assigns relative scores to all nodes in the network based on

the principle that connections to nodes having a high score contribute more to the score of the node in question.
Local bridge

An edge is a local bridge if its endpoints share no common neighbors. Unlike a bridge, a local bridge is contained

in a cycle.
Path length

The distances between pairs of nodes in the network. Average path-length is the average of these distances

between all pairs of nodes.

Prestige

In a directed graph prestige is the term used to describe a node's centrality. "Degree Prestige", "Proximity

Prestige", and "Status Prestige" are all measures of Prestige. See also degree (graph theory).
Radiality

Degree an individual’s network reaches out into the network and provides novel information and influence.
Reach

The degree any member of a network can reach other members of the network.
Se
co
nd
or
de
r
ce
ntr
ali
ty

It assigns relative scores to all nodes in the network based on the observation that important nodes see a random

walk (running on the network) "more regularly" than other nodes.[21]

Str
uct
ura
l
co
he
sio
n

The minimum number of members who, if removed from a group, would disconnect the group.[22]
Structura
l
equivale
nce

Refers to the extent to which nodes have a common set of linkages to other nodes in the system. The nodes don’t

need to have any ties to each other to be structurally equivalent.

Structural hole
Static holes that can be strategically filled by connecting one or more links to link together other points. Linked to

ideas of social capital: if you link to two people who are not linked you can control their communication.
Network
analytic
software
Main article: Social
network analysis
software

Network analytic too

are used to represe

the nodes (agents)

and edges

(relationships) in a

network, and to

analyze the network

data. Like other

software tools, the

data can be saved i

external files.

Additional informatio

comparing the vario

data input formats

used by network

analysis software

packages is availab

at NetWiki. Network

analysis tools allow

researchers to

investigate large

networks like the

Internet, disease

transmission, etc.

These tools provide

mathematical

functions that can b

applied to the netwo

model.

Visualization o
networks

Visual representatio

of social networks is

important to

understand the

network data and

convey the result of

the analysis [1]. Ma

of the analytic

software have

modules for network

visualization.

Exploration of the d

is done through

displaying nodes an

ties in various layou

and attributing color

size and other

advanced properties

to nodes.

Typical representati

of the network data

are graphs in netwo

layout (nodes and

ties). These are not

very easy-to-read a

do not allow an

intuitive interpretatio

Various new method

have been develope

in order to display

network data in mor

intuitive format

(e.g. Sociomapping

Especially when usi

social network

analysis as a tool fo

facilitating change,

different approaches

of participatory

network mapping ha

proven useful. Here

participants /

interviewers provide

network data by

actually mapping ou

the network (with pe

and paper or digitall

during the data

collection session.

One benefit of this

approach is that it

allows researchers

collect qualitative da

and ask clarifying

questions while the

network data is

collected.[23] Exampl

of network mapping

techniques are Net-

Map (pen-and-pape

based)

and VennMaker (dig

l).

Patents
Number of US social ne

patent applications publ

year and patents issued

year[24]

There has been rap

growth in the numbe

of US patent

applications that cov

new technologies

related to social

networking. The

number of published

applications has bee

growing at about

250% per year over

the past five years.

There are now over

2000 published

applications.[25] Only

about 100 of these

applications have

issued as patents,

however, largely du

to the multi-year

backlog in

examination
of business method

patents.