The Oxford Handbook of Social Networks
Edited by Ryan Light and James Moody
Abstract
Social networks fundamentally shape our lives. Networks channel the ways that information, emotions, and diseases flow through populations. Networks reflect differences in power and status in settings ranging from small peer groups to international relations across the globe. Network tools even provide insights into the ways that concepts, ideas and other socially generated contents shape culture and meaning. As such, the rich and diverse field of social network analysis has emerged as a central tool across the social sciences. This Handbook provides an overview of the theory, methods, and substantive contributions of this field. The thirty-three chapters move through the basics of social network analysis aimed at those seeking an introduction to advanced and novel approaches to modeling social networks statistically. The Handbook includes chapters on data collection and visualization, theoretical innovations, links between networks and computational social science, and how social network analysis has contributed substantively across numerous fields. As networks are everywhere in social life, the field is inherently interdisciplinary and this Handbook includes contributions from leading scholars in sociology, archaeology, economics, statistics, and information science among others.
Keywords:
social network analysis,
network science,
methodology,
computational social science,
visualization,
data collection,
social theory,
relationality
Bibliographic Information
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- Print Publication Date:
- Jan 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780190251765
- Published online:
- Dec 2020
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190251765.001.0001
Editors
Ryan Light,
editor
Ryan Light is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon and the Digital Scholarship Fellow in the Social Sciences at the University of Oregon Libraries. His work has appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Annual Review of Sociology, and Social Forces, among others.
James Moody,
editor
James Moody is the Robert O. Keohane Professor of Sociology at Duke University. He has published extensively in the field of social networks, methods, and social theory with over 70 peer reviewed papers and extensive applied consultation with industry and DoD. He is Founding Director of the Duke Network Analysis Center, former editor of the online Journal of Social Structure, and co-founding editor of the American Sociological Association's new Open Access journal Socius.
