Social Network Analysis
(invited lecture for DS 2014)

Author: Anuška Ferligoj

Affiliation:Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Abstract. Social network analysis has attracted considerable interest from social and behavioral science community in recent decades. Much of this interest can be attributed to the focus of social network analysis on relationship among units, and on the patterns of these relationships. Social network analysis is a rapidly expanding and changing field with broad range of approaches, methods, models and substantive applications. In the talk special attention will be given to:

1. General introduction to social network analysis:
   • What are social networks?
   • Data collection issues.
   • Basic network concepts: network representation; types of networks; size and density.
   • Walks and paths in networks: length and value of path; the shortest path, k-neighbours; acyclic networks.
   • Connectivity: weakly, strongly and bi-connected components; contraction; extraction.
2. Overview of tasks and corresponding methods:
   • Network/node properties: centrality (degree, closeness, betweenness); hubs and authorities.
   • Cohesion: triads, cliques, cores, islands.
   • Partitioning: blockmodeling (direct and indirect approaches; structural, regular equivalence; generalised blockmodeling); clustering and community detection.
   • Statistical models.
3. Software for social network analysis (UCINET, PAJEK, ...)

Bio. Anuška Ferligoj is a Slovenian mathematician, whose work in network analysis research is internationally recognized. Her interests include multivariate analysis (constrained and multicriteria clustering), social networks (measurement quality and blockmodeling), and survey methodology (reliability and validity of measurement). She is a fellow of the European Academy of Sociology. She is a professor of Multivariate statistical methods at the University of Ljubljana and head of the graduate program on Statistics at the University of Ljubljana. She is also editor of the journal Advances in Methodology and Statistics (Metodoloski zvezki) since 2004 and is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Mathematical Sociology, Journal of Classification, Social Networks, Statistic in Transition, Methodology, Structure and Dynamics: eJournal of Anthropology and Related Sciences. She was a Fulbright scholar in 1990 and visiting professor at the University of Pittsburgh. She was awarded the title of Ambassador of Science of the Republic of Slovenia in 1997.