International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

Social networks are the interpersonal relationships people have with friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances, and others they may come into contact with directly or via media communications. Social →  network analysis is used to understand these social relationships and how they help explain individual and social behavior ( Scott 2000 ; Wasserman & Faust 1994 ). Social networks are studied at multiple levels of analysis including dyadic, group, and system. There are three primary types of network data collection technique: local, partial, and complete ( Morris 2004 ). Local or egocentric techniques are used to measure a person's local social network. For example, a researcher can record the first names of respondents' closest friends, and then record data about the friends' socio-demographic characteristics and other attributes. Local networks are amenable to random sampling approaches (→  Sampling, Random ) and can provide data generalizable to larger populations. For example, egocentric network data can be collected to investigate how interpersonal communications about a media campaign might influence its reception. Local or egocentric data are analyzed primarily using standard statistical software (SAS, SPSS, STATA). Partial or snowball techniques start with a set of respondents who provide the names of their social networks, who are in turn enrolled as participants ... log in or subscribe to read full text