Social networks - theory and empirics

The course provides an overview of the state of the art concerning contemporary research on social networks, including important research questions, theories, measurement issues, and empirical findings. The course also learns how to generalize this knowledge to social network phenomena other than those discussed in the course. Furthermore students are acquainted with some important data-sets and given a basic understanding of the research methods that are commonly used in this field. The course prepares for social network analysis as taught in SaSR8.

The notion of social networks has engendered a promising research program. We will discuss core concepts of social networks, its major assumptions, as well as the research problems that it helps to solve. We will deal with, amongst others, the availability of social settings which influence the chance of meeting others; the emergence and the decline of networks; social influence and threshold models; network effects on conflicts and occupational attainment; the role of sour social capital, i.e. having enemies; networks within organizations, like government agencies and the institutional conditioning the effects of networks; and collective social capital. The course will discuss some well-known network features typically used in social network research, as well as an overview of some major theories in the field.