About
The rise of online social networking services such as Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter, has raised the profile of Social Network Analysis (SNA), attracting the attention of academics, policymakers and business people. Yet social networks are not new: people have always formed ties to one another, and today's online platforms only offer additional channels for networked interactions to occur. Likewise, the analysis of social networks is much more than the display of connections through visually appealing diagrams: it is about exploring how we connect as individuals, groups and organisations, and how our embeddedness in specific relational settings affects our lives and behaviours.
SNAG, the Social Network Analysis Group of BSA, aims to support sociologists interested in social networks within the BSA, to offer an opportunity for discussion and interaction with like-minded colleagues, and to coordinate activities of common interest.
SNAG is particularly keen to promote mixed-methods research on social networks, reconciling the growing opportunities offered by increasingly powerful computer packages that handle and visualize large datasets, and the interest of the qualitative socio-anthropological tradition for social relationships. The study of networks is an ideal arena for mixed-methods approaches that blend the 'structure' and 'meaning' of social interactions.
We welcome new members interested in social networks, regardless of their substantive interests (health, migration, work and employment…) and their methodological inclinations (qualitative, quantitative, or both).