Introduction to Social Network Analysis: Basics and Historical Specificities

Martin Grandjean

Workshop

HNR+ResHist Conference 2021

This video series, intended for a beginner audience, proposes to review the main concepts of social network analysis (terminology, visual analysis, centrality measures, etc.) while highlighting the challenges that arise when analyzing relational historical objects. After an introduction to the basics of network analysis, it provides an overview of the application of these methods in the historical sciences: there is no single way to extract a network from historical sources and this has implications for the types of analysis that can be done, sometimes creating biases that we must be aware of. And what is generally the status of network analysis in such research, is it a heuristic tool or just an illustration? Then comes the question of „translating“ the concepts and results of network analysis into a historical research. To conclude, it proposes some reflections on the main difficulties of historical network analysis, between temporality analysis and multilayer system modeling.

Text and slides

YouTube playlist