Social Networks and Social Capital

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Social networks is one of the fastest growing sub-areas within the discipline of sociology. The science of social networks focuses on measuring, modeling, and understanding the different ways that people are connected to one another. This is one of the only sub-areas of sociology that has a body of theory accompanied by a distinct methodology. SNA (Social Network Analysis) is not just about analytic techniques. Many years of social network studies have extensively represented rich sociological theory traditions such as structuralism, interactionism, and relational perspectives. This course is designed to provide students with the opportunity to (1) Understand basic network concepts and theories, (2) Use social-scientific terminology to describe patterns of structure and change observed in networks, (3) Understand and be capable of using measures based on graph theory and matrix algebra to analyze and describe social networks, (4) Understand the way that social network concepts, theory, and measures can be applied to shed light on a wide variety of phenomena across different fields of study in the social sciences and beyond.