Social Network Analysis

Concepts and Measurements in Social Network Analysis

October 22, 2024
Christian Caballero
by Christian Caballero. We live in an interconnected world, more so now than ever. Social Network Analysis (SNA) provides a toolkit to study the influence of this interconnectivity. This blog post introduces some key theoretical concepts behind SNA, as well as a family of metrics for measuring influence in a network, known as centrality. These concepts and measurements help form the basis for a theoretically informed study of social relationships in an era where the availability of relational data has dramatically increased thanks to technological advances.

Tom van Nuenen, Ph.D.

Data/Research Scientist, Senior Consultant, and Senior Instructor
D-Lab
Social Sciences
Digital Humanities

I work as a Lecturer, Data Scientist, and Senior Consultant at UC Berkeley's D-Lab. I lead the curriculum design for D-Lab’s data science workshop portfolio, as well as the Digital Humanities Summer Program at Berkeley.

Former research projects include a Research Associate position in the ‘Discovering and Attesting Digital Discrimination’ project at King’s College London (2019-2022) and a researcher-in-residence role for the UK’s National Research Centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction, and Adversarial Influence Online (2022). My research uses Natural Language Processing methods to...

Iñigo Parra

Availability: By appointment only

Consulting Areas: Python, R, LaTeX, Data Manipulation and Cleaning, Data Science, Data Visualization, Deep Learning, Digital Humanities, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Social Network Analysis, Regression Analysis, Means Tests, Bash or Command Line, Excel, Gephi, Git or Github, Qualtrics, RStudio, Overleaf

Jane (Mango) Angar

Data Science Fellow 2024-2025
Political Science

Hi! I am a PhD candidate in the Political Science Department at UC Berkeley. My dissertation traces the emergence of disability rights groups in Africa, focusing on Zambia and Malawi, and examines factors influencing their effectiveness. I use mixed methods, including archival work, field interviews, participant observation, and surveys for data collection.

My data analysis techniques include text analysis, social network analysis, means tests, and regressions. In my free time, I enjoy moderately difficult hikes, walks along the beach with my dog, Princess, and...

Elijah Mercer

Data Science Fellow 2024-2025
School of Information

Elijah, originally from Newark, New Jersey, now resides in San Francisco, California, dedicated to social and juvenile justice. With a Criminology degree from American University, he began as a research intern at the Investigative Reporting Workshop, focusing on the Digital Divide.

Teaching in Baltimore with Teach for America reinforced his belief in research and data for marginalized communities. In roles at the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud, New York Police Department, and San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, Elijah used data to combat crime. Now...

Christian Caballero

Data Science Fellow 2024-2025
Political Science

Christian Caballero is a Political Science PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on American politics and political behavior. In particular, he studies the ways in which social networks influence processes of political persuasion and democratic deliberation, as well as how political ideologies develop within subcultures.

He holds a B.A. in Politics and Sociology from New York University and an M.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Addison Pickrell

IUSE Undergraduate Advisory Board
Mathematics
Sociology

Addison is an aspiring mathematician and social scientist (Class of '27). He loves collecting books he'll never read, is an open-source and open-access advocate, and an aspiring community organizer and systems disrupter. Ask me about community-based participatory action research (CBPAR), critical pedagogy, applied mathematics, and social science.

Tonya D. Lindsey, Ph.D.

Data Science Fellow
Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS)

Tonya D. Lindsey is a visiting scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies and the project director of CRB Nexus: Where Policy Meets Research, an initiative of the California Research Bureau (CRB) at the California State Library. As project director of CRB Nexus, she is developing a community of practice space for California’s policy staff and public scholars. As a CRB senior researcher she uses her expertise in research methods to analyze a wide variety of policy questions at the request of legislators, the governor’s office, and their staff. She received her PhD in sociology...

The More Things Change the More They Stay the Same?

December 18, 2023
Tonya Lindsey, Ph.D.
By Tonya D. Lindsey, Ph.D. Think about how often you hear someone gripe about the deterioration of society and then blame the Internet or social media. This blog suggests that the things we are exposed to virtually are not new but instead present us with more and frequent opportunities to reflect on perennial social problems and find solutions even as we better understand ourselves as individuals in a global community.

Why We Need Digital Hermeneutics

July 13, 2023
Tom van Nuenen
by Tom van Nuenen. Tom van Nuenen discusses the sixth iteration of his course named Digital Hermeneutics at Berkeley. The class teaches the practices of data science and text analysis in the context of hermeneutics, the study of interpretation. In the course, students analyze texts from Reddit communities, focusing on how these communities make sense of the world. This task combines both close and distant readings of texts, as students employ computational tools to find broader patterns and themes. The article reflects on the rise of AI language models like ChatGPT, and how these machines interpret human interpretations. The popularity and profitability of language models presents an issue for the future of open research, due to the monetization of social media data.