Social Network Analysis and the Concept of Centrality - Coursework Example

1. Produce a visualization of SAMPLK3 which incorporates the groups described above in your visualization. Social network analysis is a procedure where the sociologist finds the fundamental property of social structure with the element of power. Here, the function of power is a controversial issue and there is much less agreement as to what power is, and how it is possible to analyze its causes and consequences. Here, the main function of the analysis is to understand the power and its relation to the concept of centrality. The network thinking has contributed much to the number of important insights about social power. Here, the most important thing is the network approach which gives importance to the fact that power is inherently relational .so from the visualization of the SAMPLK3 which incorporates the groups one can find out the most central actors in the network. With the use of UCINet all different kinds of relations can be understood at the same time. In this data there are several group produced by Sampson and in this group there are several actors. The groups can be described as below: Winifred, John, Gregory, Hugh, Boniface, Mark and Albert (The Young Turks) Bonaventure, Ambrose, Berthold, Peter and Louis (The Loyal Opposition) Basil, Elias and Simplicius (The Outcasts) Romuland, Victor and Amand (The floaters). It is a fact that an individual does not possess power in the abstract form; however they have power because they have the capability to dominate others. In other sense, they have ego’s power that means alters’ dependence. Here in the data we have many actors and they form a network. Fig 1 : Netdraw ii) Find the most central actors in the network. How would you describe their roles with respect to the above groups? Incorporate one of your centrality results into your visualization. Different actors in the network has different role and with the help of the network the most central actor can be found. Here the most central actors can be found out with the study of power. This is done with the help of degree centrality where counting the number of in-ties and out-ties of the nodes suggests certain actors are more "central". In case an actor receives many ties he is said to be prominent. In this generated graph, it can be noticed that Elias situated at the centre of the network and several members in the group somehow does not have ties with one another. Also, there are seven individual who are in isolated position in the network which suggest that they have no major role to play in the network. The main central actors in the network are Elias, Peter and John. Here, by simply counting the number of in-ties and out-ties of the nodes can suggest actors. Here we can see that this network is helpful in indicating the central actors. If we consider the whole network, then we can see that there exists a group of central actors. It can be understood that “centrality” is an attribute of individual actors and hence they have certain position in the network .Here, certain actors are more central .Here, we can see that actors in the “outcast and “floaters” possess the greatest out – degreed and hence this can be regarded as the most influential actors. Here the actors “outcast” and “floaters” work in collaboration with “young turks”and this is evident when we overview the in – degree. In order to study power a network analysis is done .Here, consider the three simple graphs of networks in figures 1, 2, and 3 which are called the "star," "line," and "circle." Fig : 1 Star network Fig 2 : Line Network Fig 3 : Circle Network iii) By analyzing the network do you think Sampson was correct in his group identification? Is the structure consistent with the term outcasts and floaters? By analyzing the network it can found that group identification by Sampson was not idealistic. The group identification can be criticized here as Sampson has taken in to consideration only the immediate ties. Here the immediate ties that an actor has or the ties of the neighbor of the actor are given importance .We can notice here that the indirect ties to all other individuals in a group are mainly ignored. In case one actor could be tied to many number of other actors but those other actors can be seen disconnected from the network as a whole. In such a situation, the actor could be central in position but in a limited manner. Here the group identification process is not performed in an appropriate manner. If Sampson has used closeness centrality approach then the distance of an actor to all others in the network could be analyzed. Closeness centrality approaches emphasize the distance of an actor to all others in the network by focusing on the distance from each actor to all others. Actually, we can see that in the structure the consistency of the term outcasts and floaters is controversial. In the figure, we can see that there exists a structural inconsistency of the Sampson data and different time point. They are only consistent with three clusters of actors. The Young Turks (John Bosco, Gregory, Mark, Winfrid, Hugh, Boniface and Albert); the Loyal Opposition (Peter, Bonaventure, Berthold, Ambrose, Victor, Romauld, Louis and Amand), and the Outcasts (Basil,Elias and Simplicius) were identified by Sampson (1968). Here we can see that, there are some minor differences with Ambrose being in the Young Turk cluster and Amand joining the Outcasts. iv) Examine SAMPLK1, how have things changed over time? Produce a visualization that captures the changes When the SAMPLK1 was examined later it was that the data were for a different set of monks. It was observed that, some of the people in the groups have departed before SAMPLK2. Those who were left behind were joined by a group on new trainee monk. This happened because summing the ranks seems confusing and problematic in relation to the measurement. One problem with Sampson’s data is the small number of time points. Over the time it was observed that the Loyal Opposition has split in to two clusters. Basically, the four of their members (Bonaventure, Berthold, Ambrose and Romuald) has sent mainly positive ties to members of the Young Turks, a feature obscured in the structural balance partition. Consistent with structural balance, they send positive ties to the other in the Loyal Oppositions and negative ties to those in the Outcasts. It was observed that the two partitions differ only in the location of Albert, again with positive blocks off the main diagonal. It was observed that Bonaventure and Ambrise has formed a single cluster, receiving positive ties from the members of the other three clusters v) Soon after the data SAMPLK3 was collected Gregory, Basil, Elias and Simplicius were expelled. Almost immediately John departed followed by Hugh, Boniface, Mark, Albert, Victor, Amand and Romuland (roughly in order). What, if anything, in the network structure helps us understand what happened. What further information would help? One month later, after the expelling of the actors Romuland also left. After that Sampson grouped the monks and then named the groups as follows:{Winifrid, John, Gregory, Hugh, Boniface, Mark, Albert} The Young Turks.{Bonaventure, Ambrose, Berthold, Peter, Louis} The Loyal Opposition{Basil, Elias, Simplicius} The Outcasts{Romuland, Victor, Amand} Indeterminate. The following structural equivalence matrix was obtained when the Esteem and Disesteem matrices were submitted to the profile similarity routine in UCINET. The data is not symmetric so the profiles use both the rows and columns, since this can be achieved by placing the transpose of a matrix as a new relation and then only taking the rows this is often referred to as including the transposes. Euclidean distances were selected as the choice for measuring the amount of structural equivalence between the profiles. The distances have been rounded up to the nearest whole number. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 RO BO AM BE PE LO VI WI JO GR HU BO MA AL AM BA EL SI -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ROMULAND 0 7 7 8 11 7 8 5 9 10 7 7 8 7 7 9 8 8 BONAVENTURE 7 0 5 8 12 8 7 8 10 12 9 8 9 8 9 11 10 10 AMBROSE 7 5 0 9 12 9 7 7 10 11 8 8 10 8 9 10 10 10 BERTHOLD 8 8 9 0 10 10 9 10 11 12 11 10 9 10 10 10 10 11 PETER 11 12 12 10 0 10 12 12 13 13 12 12 13 13 11 12 12 13 LOUIS 7 8 9 10 10 0 10 8 10 12 10 9 10 9 7 10 10 10 VICTOR 8 7 7 9 12 10 0 8 11 12 10 9 11 9 10 11 10 9 WINFRID 5 8 7 10 12 8 8 0 8 9 6 5 8 7 8 8 9 9 JOHN 9 10 10 11 13 10 11 8 0 10 10 10 11 10 9 11 11 11 GREGORY 10 12 11 12 13 12 12 9 10 0 9 9 11 10 11 9 12 12 HUGH 7 9 8 11 12 10 10 6 10 9 0 5 9 7 9 9 10 9 BONIFACE 7 8 8 10 12 9 9 5 10 9 5 0 7 5 9 9 9 9 MARK 8 9 10 9 13 10 11 8 11 11 9 7 0 6 9 9 9 9 ALBERT 7 8 8 10 13 9 9 7 10 10 7 5 6 0 9 9 9 9 AMAND 7 9 9 10 11 7 10 8 9 11 9 9 9 9 0 9 9 9 BASIL 9 11 10 10 12 10 11 8 11 9 9 9 9 9 9 0 7 9 ELIAS 8 10 10 10 12 10 10 9 11 12 10 9 9 9 9 7 0 5 SIMPLICIUS 8 10 10 11 13 10 9 9 11 12 9 9 9 9 9 9 5 0 . . Read More