Introduction to Social Network Analysis
Zurich Summer School for Women in Political Methodology 2018
July 4-5, 2018
Instructor: Alex Hanna, University of Toronto/Google
Social network analysis is a body of methods for analyzing the structure of social, communicative, and political interactions. In this workshop, we will be covering the basic and intermediate topics in network analysis. We will cover basic network terminology and concepts, network visualization, and descriptive metrics which describe whole networks, individual nodes, and subgroups. We will also cover statistical inference on determinants of network structure.
There are no readings for this course. Any background information you need will be covered in the workshop.
This is a rough schedule for the course. It's very possible one topic will bleed into the next, and we may not get to all the material.
| Section | Time |
|---|---|
| Introduction to Social Network Analysis | Thursday, 13:30-17:30 |
| Network Visualization | Friday, 09:00-12:30 |
| Network Metrics and Algorithms | Friday, 13:30-15:30 |
| Statistical Inference in Networks | Friday, 15:30-17:30 |
A word on pedagogy
My methods pedagogy is hands-on in a way that will force you to be working on your own early in the process. It will also mean you will be frequently failing early and often. Luckily, you are in a group of very smart people who are motivated to learn the topic at hand.
I also adopt a few pedagogical practices from the (Software|Data) Carpentries which I'll introduce throughout the course.
Appendices
Research does not work in a vacuum and nor does preparing teaching materials. This is a rough list of materials I used in preparing this workshop. Some of these links are embedded in the text, but otherwise they are here.
- statnet documentation
- igraph R documentation
- Bruce DesMarias polnet 2018 tutorial
- François Briatte's massive network analysis list
- Katya Ognyanova polnet 2018 tutorial
- Katya Ognyanova NetSciX 2016 tutorial
- Lessons on exponential random graph modeling from Grey’s Anatomy hook-ups
- ERGM Tutorial
- Patterns in the Ivy: The Small World of Metal
- Fowler et al. US Cosponsorship data
- Networks in Historical Research
- statnet ERGM tutorial
The workshops themselves were prepared using Jupyter Notebooks and the IRKernel.