Social Network Analysis For the Rest of Us
Posted by Allison Fine on July 17, 2009
Social Network Analysis or SNA can feel overwhelming and confounding to newcomer. The basic premise isn’t complicated, we live in a variety of personal and professional networks wherein people are connected to one another; or many people are connected to particularly influential organizations or people. We should be able to create a diagram that shows us what that network looks like.
For social change efforts the purpose of drawing the map is to see who is connected to whom, how strong those connections, who the influentials are, and conversely who isn’t on the map who should be. Here is the profession of social network according to the two smartest folks in the field Valdis Krebs and June Holley.
There are very sophisticated software that research organizations use to feed in lots of data about the people and organizations in a network, how information flows, who they are connected to, how often and at what trust level, etc. And then they spit out those amazing Spirographic pictures that look soooo cool.
But, it’s always seemed daunting to me about what us regular folks who can’t afford the fancy software experts can do to see and understand our networks.
And today I found the answer (courtesy, of course, Beth and this amazing post of hers!) the Net-Map Toolbox by Eva Schiffer!
Eva provides a step-by-step overview of the process on her blog, plus a video and a handbook. It’s an amazingly common sense approach. If I can do it, you can, try it out!
One Response to “Social Network Analysis For the Rest of Us”
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Beth Kanter said
I just got word from Packard Grantee that experimented with this approach. Should make for a good case study in the book!