ABSTRACT
Humans are a social species. When we are diagnosed with a health condition, we share that news with others. Health professionals work with each other to provide care. Organizations collaborate in order to connect patients with the technologies or experts required for their care. Our communication activities link actors (patients, providers, and organizations) together; our organizational hierarchies can shape with whom we communicate and what we say. Social network analysis is a perspective that focuses on estimating, predicting, and understanding the consequences of patterns in these links (Freeman, 1978). This method includes means by which to uncover links between actors, to estimate an actor’s position within the system of links, and to estimate the character of a system based on the links within it. Social network analysis is a method that includes means by which to understand changes within a network over time, to predict its appearance, and to test its influence on actor-level and system-level outcomes. With the attention and excitement about social network analysis, the number of methodological options and analyses continue to grow. This chapter will provide an introduction to social network analysis and its utility to health communication research; readers interested in greater detail should consult one of the many texts now available (Newman, 2010; Scott, 2013; Wasserman & Faust, 1994). As an introduction, this chapter describes the fundamental concepts of social network analysis, its assumptions and applications, and procedures to gather and estimate basic parameters.
