Comparitive Study of SNA

A comparison of Social Network Analysis (SNA) tools
Objective To know about Social Network Analysis and its utility To know about tools available for Social Network Analysis Comparison and finding the best of those tools

What is Social Network Analysis (SNA)? First let us understand what a social network is? A social network is a social structure made up of individuals (or organizations) called "nodes", which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.

Now let us arrive at the definition of SNA.. Social network analysis (SNA) views social relationships in terms of network theory consisting of nodes and ties (also called edges, links, or connections). Nodes are the individual actors within the networks, and ties are the relationships between the actors. The resulting graph-based structures are often very complex. There can be many kinds of ties between the nodes (Wikipedia)

In a refined way, the definition goes as follows: Network analysis is the study of social relations among a set of actors. It is a field of study -- a set of phenomena or data which we seek to understand. In the process of working in this field, network researchers have developed a set of distinctive theoretical perspectives as well. Some of the hallmarks of these perspectives are: focus on relationships between actors rather than attributes of actors sense of interdependence: a molecular rather atomistic view structure affects substantive outcomes emergent effects

What is Social Network Analysis Software? SNA software facilitates quantitative or qualitative analysis of social networks by describing features of a network, either through numerical or visual representation.

Networks can consist any information from project teams, class rooms, legislatures, memberships or networking websites like Twitter or Facebook or even on the Internet. Network features can be at the level of individual nodes, dyads, triads, ties/and or edges or the entire network.

SNA software generates the features from raw network data formatted in an edge list, adjacency list, or adjacency matrix (also called socio matrix) after combined with (individual/node level) attribute data. Some SNA softwares can perform predictive analysis. This includes using network phenomena such as tie to predict individual level of outcomes using individuallevel phenomena to predict the network outcomes such as the formation of tie/edge.

What does SNA software consists of??? Network Analysis software generally consists of either packages based on GUIs or packages built for scripting/programming languages. GUI packages are easier to learn, while scripting tools are more powerful and extensible.

Widely used GUI packages are: UCINET (for statistical analysis of Networks with easy-to-use visualization capabilities) Pajek (freeware with extensive documentation) GUESS,ORA,Cryptoscape (which are having more rich and extensible features)

Commonly used and well documented scripting tools used for networking analysis include the Starnet suite of packages Programming language. Igraph has the packages programming languages for for R R and statistical Python
SNAP package for large scale network analysis in C+ +
Now let us look into the some of the tools individually and their utility and usage: Tool Name
AutoMap (for Network Text Analysis) .txt
Input Format/ Output format
Platform and License

Any platform (in Java)
details
Its a text mining tool that supports the extraction of relational data from text files
C-IKNOW (for survey .DL, graphML/ .txt, .DL, design, data collection andgraphML visualization) Commetrix (for dynamic Commetric files, direct network visualization and import data form analysis) databases)/csv tables, graphs
Mac, Windows and Linux Its a powerful web-based OS(freeware) software tool for social network analysis Any System supporting Java (free trail based software) Its a software framework and tool for dynamic network analysis and visualization
Cryptoscape (for General GraphML,XGMML, GML Any Open source system An open source platform complex network data and KGML/Cryptoscape supporting Java for complex network data integration) session(.cys), Graph ML analysis, integration etc
Now let us look into the some of the tools individually and their utility and usage: Tool Name Input Format/ Output format Platform and License details
DyNet (for data analysis) .agf Proprietary software DyNet SE is a innovative (proprietary),.net(pajek), (starting from 3000$/user) software tool to analyse .txt/ same as input format pools of complex data having relations. EveSim (EveSimulator) XML, Simcase/XML Any System supporting Java The EveSimulator provides a simulation framework for biologically inspired P2P systems Its a open source for graph visualization frame work. It has several main graph layouts
GraphViz (graph visualization software)
Graph viz (.dot)/.bmp,fig,.gd files
Linux, MaC, Windows (Open source)
Igraph (for analysis and .txt, graphml, .net/.txt, .dot, Windows, Linux, and Mac Igraph is a c Library for visualization for very large .net etc the analysis of large networks) networks. It includes implementation of classic graph theory problems and analysis
iPoint (for analysis and visualization of social networks based on age, gender and location and sentiment) Java Universal Network Graph (JUNG) framework (for network and graph manipulation)
details
Take any valid XML/XML Windows, Linux and Mac iPoint monitors and (commercial) analyzes consumer generated media, the full privacy of author is maintained while collecting data. Built-in support for GraphML, Pajek and some text formats/as same as input Any open source having BSD license and supporting java JUNG is a java API and library that provides a common and extensible language for modeling, analysis and visualization of networks It is the premier open source library for conducting SNA research, it is written in python NodeXL is a free and open Excel 2007 add-in and C#.net library for network analysis
libSNA (for basic network .csv/.csv statistics)
Any Open source supporting python
Network overview Email,.csv(text), .xls, Windows XP/Vista, discovery exploration for .xslt, .net(pajek)/same as freeware(MS-PL) excel (NodeXL) input
NetMiner (all-in-one software for Network Analysis and Visualization)

.xls, .csv, .dl(UCINET), .dat/ same as input

Microsoft Windows (commercial software)
details
NetMiner is a software tool for exploratory analysis and visualization of large network data Its a dynamic metanetwork assessment and analysis tool containing hundreds of social network and dynamic networks A widely used program for drawing networks, Pajek also has significant analytic capabilities.
ORA (for Social Network DyNetML, .csv/same as Analysis and Network input Visualization)
Windows (freeware for non-commercial use)
Pajek (for analysis of large .net, .paj, scale social networks) .dat(UCINET)/xml and same as input
Windows , Linux, Mac (freeware for noncommercial use)
R (for social network analysis within R Programming environment)
R will read almost any data format file/same as input
Windows, Linux and Mac R consists several (Open Source) pacakages relevant for social network analysis it also includes igraph and other network data

Still the list goes on.. Visual representations of social networks are important to understand network data and convey the result of interpretation of network data, With respect to visualization, network analysis tools are used to change the layout, color, size and other properties of network representation.

Problems with Network Analysis The field of network analysis is conventionally criticized for being too much methodological and too little theoretical. Critics say that there are few truly network theories of substantive phenomena. This is not a well-considered argument, however, because when examples of network theories are presented, critics say 'that's not really a network theory'. A real problem with network analysis in the past has been the inability to test hypotheses statistically, because the data are by their very nature autocorrelated, violating assumptions of independence (random sampling) built-in to most classical statistical tests.

Problems with Network Analysis A continuing problem is the lack of sufficient computing resources to handle large datasets. It is often a problem to bound a social network. If we are looking at needle-sharing among drug users, we can artificially bound the network at some arbitrary boundary, such as city or neighborhood, but this distorts the data. Yet we cannot let the network get too large because we cannot process the data. To conclude, for a complete network analysis to be done, the network data should be complete. Also each and every software has its distinct usage and utility. Since the data is available is large variety of formats a common package or application may not be suitable, its dependent on the way the data is extracted or captured from the source and maintained in the format.

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A comparison of Social Network Analysis (SNA) tools

A comparison of Social Network Analysis (SNA) tools

A comparison of Social Network Analysis (SNA) tools

A comparison of Social Network Analysis (SNA) tools

A comparison of Social Network Analysis (SNA) tools

A comparison of Social Network Analysis (SNA) tools

A comparison of Social Network Analysis (SNA) tools

A comparison of Social Network Analysis (SNA) tools

A comparison of Social Network Analysis (SNA) tools

A comparison of Social Network Analysis (SNA) tools

SNAP package for large scale network analysis in C+ +

Input Format/ Output format

Platform and License

GraphViz (graph visualization software)

Graph viz (.dot)/.bmp,fig,.gd files

Linux, MaC, Windows (Open source)

Input Format/ Output format

Platform and License

libSNA (for basic network .csv/.csv statistics)

Any Open source supporting python

Input Format/ Output format

Platform and License

Windows (freeware for non-commercial use)

Windows , Linux, Mac (freeware for noncommercial use)

R (for social network analysis within R Programming environment)

R will read almost any data format file/same as input

A comparison of Social Network Analysis (SNA) tools

A comparison of Social Network Analysis (SNA) tools

A comparison of Social Network Analysis (SNA) tools

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