Fundamentals of Big Data Network Analysis for Research and Industry

5 Position and Structure

One of the most crucial parts of network analysis is “who is the most important or the most dominant actor.” This is relevant to the position of an actor in a network. Generally, the actor who is at the most essential or the most dominant position is located at a strategic point. An individual, who has high centrality, is described to have special socioeconomic status. A group with a high centrality has a high survival rate showing good performance. Network analysis suggests methods of centrality analysis that includes connectivity, degree, closeness, and betweenness according to the different conditions and ranks of the individual actors. In other words, the positions of each individual actor in a network are quantitatively defined. Regarding the actor’s index, we can add and compare measured outcomes within the level of a group or a whole network. Centrality analysis can be divided according to the existence of directional relations, where the analysis results can vary depending on a weighted value of relations. The measurement of directional relation is divided into in-degree and out-degree.

5.1 Position

In social network analysis, researchers are primarily interested in the “most important or most dominant” actors, an issue that is related to the position of the actors within a network. The most important or dominant player within the network is typically located at a strategic location in the network. Network analysis proposes various ...