scholarly journals Network Analysis in the Social Sciences

Science ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 323 (5916) ◽  
pp. 892-895 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. P. Borgatti ◽  
A. Mehra ◽  
D. J. Brass ◽  
G. Labianca
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
The Social

Conveying Social Change: Some Formal Considerations

1987 ◽  
Vol 8 (x) ◽  
pp. 187-209
Author(s):  
John Modell
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
United States ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Data Collection ◽  
The United States ◽  
Event History ◽  
Formal Modeling ◽  
The Social

Over live past two decades the social sciences in the United States have experienced a remarkable period of methodological enrichment. Numerous advances in statistics, in formal modeling, in computation, and in data collection have fueled this happy methodological surge. Substantively. demography, network analysis, event history and a number of other quite generalized analytic perspectives have revised the ways we can describe and account for change, and have made the social sciences powerfully relevant to policy in a way they were not only a while ago.

Two Faces of the “Relational Turn”

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (01) ◽  
pp. 27-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peeter Selg
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Network ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Relational Approach ◽  
American Perspective ◽  
The Social ◽  
Previous Decade ◽  
Anglo American

ABSTRACTIn the previous decade, the literature on “relational approach” has burgeoned in the social sciences. Recently, a “relational turn” in political science was called for in a symposium in this journal (McClurg and Young, 2011). The participants perceived a promising path for such a “turn” by introducing social network analysis (SNA) into political science. This call is informed by a conviction that the central concept of political science— that is, power—isrelational. Considering this viewpoint, this article argues that there are two different understandings of the connection between the qualifier “relational” and the concept of power, referred to as the “Anglo-American” and the “Continental” perspectives. I contend that symposium participants conceived of the connection from only the Anglo-American perspective and that the Continental understanding would add extra value for political science.

Policy Networks

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. A. W. Rhodes
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Policy Networks ◽  
Policy Network ◽  
Power Dependence ◽  
Holy Grail ◽  
Institutional Void ◽  
The Social ◽  
Problem Of Many Hands

This chapter reviews literature on policy networks examining descriptive, theoretical, and prescriptive accounts. It identifies three descriptive uses—policy networks as: interest intermediation, interorganizational analysis, and governance. It identifies two theories about policy networks: power-dependence and rational choice. It reviews three approaches to reforming and managing networks: instrumental, interactive, and institutional. It then discusses the central debates and challenges about comparing networks, explaining change, and managing the institutional void. Finally, the chapter identifies four main problems: the mix of governing structures; the problem of many hands; the holy grail of coordination; and steering not rowing. Policy network analysis has become one more locus for the endless debates about how we know what we know in the social sciences.

Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design as a Journal: The Interdisciplinarity of its Environment and the Citation Impact

2007 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 826-838 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loet Leydesdorff
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Network ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Citation Index ◽  
Citation Impact ◽  
Social Science Citation Index ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Planning And Design ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Matrix

The citation impact of Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design can be visualized using its citation relations with journals in its environment as the links of a network. The size of the nodes is varied in correspondence to the relative citation impact in this environment. Additionally, one can correct for the effect of within-journal ‘self’-citations. The network can be partitioned and clustered using algorithms from social network analysis. After transposing the matrix in terms of rows and columns, the citing patterns can be mapped analogously. Citing patterns reflect the activity of the community of authors who publish in the journal, while being cited indicates reception. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design is cited across the interface between the social sciences and the natural sciences, but its authors cite almost exclusively from the domain of the Social Science Citation Index.

scholarly journals Potentialities and limitations of network analysis methodologies: a theoretical model focused on the Social Sciences

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 199-214
Author(s):  
Francisco Conrado Filho ◽  
Luís António Santos
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Methodological Tool ◽  
Media Channels ◽  
Separate Discipline

This paper explores the potentialities and limitations of network analysis, not only as a methodological tool that may be used in Social Science research but also as a separate discipline, with its own well-tested theories. Providing a framework for the use of network analysis involves discussing the role that it can play in understanding objects using a field that is sometimes accused of being too technical. Despite the fact that it has increased in popularity over recent years, driven by new communication technologies and especially social media channels, network analysis has a much broader use, and we therefore aim to demonstrate some innovative approaches that may be used in Social Science research. Finally, because it is an interdisciplinary methodology, we discuss some of the associated risks and biases.

scholarly journals The Concept of Sustainability on Social Media: A Social Listening Approach

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 2122 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Teresa Ballestar ◽  
Miguel Cuerdo-Mir ◽  
María Teresa Freire-Rubio
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Network ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Open Source Software ◽  
Sustainable Management ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Listening

The concept of sustainability has gone far beyond the issues of the sustainable management of natural and environmental resources. Nowadays, sustainability is part of the social sciences in a different way. The aim of this research was dual. Firstly, we analyzed the different contexts and areas of knowledge where this concept is used in society by using social listening on Twitter, one of the most popular social networks today. The sentiments of these conversations were rated to assess whether the feelings and perceptions of these conversations on the social network were positive or negative regarding the use of the concept. Also, we tested if these perceptions about the topic were attuned to other more formal fields, such as scientific research, or strategies followed nationally or internationally by agencies and organizations related to sustainability. The method used on this first part of the research consisted of an analysis of 15,000 tweets collected from Twitter using natural language processing (NLP) for clustering the main areas of knowledge of topics where the concept of sustainability was used, and the sentiment of these conversations on the social network. Secondly, we mapped the social network of users who generated or spread content regarding sustainability on Twitter within the period of observation. Social network analysis (SNA) focuses on the taxonomy of the network and its dynamics and identifies the most relevant players in terms of generation of conversation and also their referrers who spread their messages worldwide. For this purpose, we used Gephi, an open source software used for network analysis and visualization, that allows for the exploration and visualization of large networks of any kind, in depth. The findings of this research are new, not only because of the mix of technology and methods used for extracting data from Twitter and analyzing them from different perspectives, but also because they show that social listening is a powerful method for analyzing relevant social phenomena. Listening on social networks can be used more effectively than other more traditional processes to gather data that are more costly and time consuming and lack the momentum and spontaneity of digital conversations.

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