network flow model social network analysis definition

77), a medieval system of land tenure and political allegiance that is structurally similar to modern corporate organization. and American Academy of Political and Social Science, Philadelphia: The Academy, 1963, p. For example, Harrison White, one of the founders of SNA, wrote that “subinfeudation reminds one of industrial decentralization” (Monograph 2, Philadelphia, A. N. S. By doing so, it enables the researcher to identify similarities across widely disparate contexts. Like any mathematical approach to social research, SNA strips away the unique details of social situations to reveal, or model, the underlying structures. At the heart of SNA are three insights, or assumptions: that social relations are more important than individual attributes in understanding human society that the structure of social relations is more important than their content and that social relations can be represented by graphs of points and lines, which can then be analyzed visually, or using the concepts, theorems, and methods of graph theory. It is used by researchers in such disciplines as sociology, social anthropology, social psychology, political science, history, communication science, economics, epidemiology, criminology, ethnology, ethology, physics, and information science. Since its beginnings in the 1930s, social network analysis (SNA) has emerged as a major paradigm for social theory and research in such areas as communication, organizations, markets, community, the family and marriage, small group dynamics, social support, social mobility, and animal behavior.

Network flow model social network analysis definition