So Who Are You Connected To?

Social network analysis (SNA) is a hot topic in academia these days; I picked it up in a class in my Master's program at Georgetown. The concept got a lot of attention after assisting in the capture Saddam Hussein in 2003. While we can’t all use SNA to find genocidal dictators, it can be very useful in ICT4D - I'll describe one example below. So what is it? Social network analysis focuses on how networks are structured, looking at what ties exist between "nodes". Nodes can be just about anything: people, countries, topics, and so on; it all depends on the network that you’re looking to study. Once the connections have been mapped out, you can start to see how the network is connected. Depending on your focus, SNA can help uncover critical underlying structures: which nodes have the most ties? Do certain nodes act as bridges and connect groups that would otherwise be disconnected? Are certain nodes brokers of information because they link one group to information they would otherwise not have? These answers could be useful for designing a citizen participation project and determining which organizations a group can partner with. For example, an organization could map out how groups in their area are connected. Ties would then represent previous collaboration on projects. Once the organization knows who works on citizen participation projects, they can then map out which organizations they have “access” to. Perhaps there is an organization that is central to their goals, but they do not have a direct tie to it; this network analysis would demonstrate see who they do have access to who can facilitate an introduction. This is just one idea of how network analysis can help organizations; I'll come back to the topic through the summer.