social network

social network

social network

social network

social network

social network

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This article is about the theoretical concept as used in the social and behavioral sciences. For social networking sites, see social networking service. For the 2010 movie, see The Social Network. For other uses, see Social network (disambiguation).

Sociology
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Network science
Theory · History
Graph · Complex network · Contagion Small-world  · Scale-free  · Community structure  · Percolation  · Evolution  · Controllability  · Graph drawing  · Social capital  · Link analysis  · Optimization Reciprocity  · Closure  · Homophily Transitivity  · Preferential attachment Balance  · Network effect  · Influence
Types of Networks
Information  · Telecommunication Social · Biological  · Neural Interdependent  · Semantic Random  · Dependency  · Flow
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Vertex  · Edge  · Component Directed · Multigraph · Bipartite Weighted  · Hypergraph  · Random Cycle  · Loop  · Path Neighborhood  · Clique  · Complete  · Cut Data structure  · Adjacency list & matrix Incidence list & matrix
Metrics and Algorithms
Centrality  · Degree  · Betweenness Closeness  · PageRank  · Motif Clustering  · Degree distribution  · Assortativity  · Distance  · Modularity
Models
Random  · Erdős–Rényi Barabási–Albert  · Watts–Strogatz ERGM  · Epidemic  · Hierarchical
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A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations) and a set of the dyadic ties between these actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for analyzing the structure of whole social entities as well as a variety of theories explaining the patterns observed in these structures.^[1] The study of these structures uses social network analysis to identify local and global patterns, locate influential entities, and examine network dynamics.
Social networks and the analysis of them is an inherently interdisciplinary academic field which emerged from social psychology, sociology, statistics, and graph theory. Georg Simmel authored early structural theories in sociology emphasizing the dynamics of triads and "web of group affiliations."^[2] Jacob Moreno is credited with developing the first sociograms in the 1930s to study interpersonal relationships. These approaches were mathematically formalized in the 1950s and theories and methods of social networks became pervasive in the social and behavioral sciences by the 1980s.^[1][3] Social network analysis is now one of the major paradigms in contemporary sociology, and is also employed in a number of other social and formal sciences. Together with other complex networks, it forms part of the nascent field of network science.^[4][5]