About Us
Frequently Asked Questions
- Any other questions? !
- Learn more about social network analysis at Wikipedia.org.
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How can social network analysis break through public knowledge to reveal the more important — and more hidden — relationships, like strong friendships?
Public information can reveal those kinds of bonds if you look the right way. For example: The more mutual public affiliations we can discover between two people (such as overlapping advisory board or social club memberships), the more "friends" they will have in common, and thus the stronger and more important their relationship is.
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How can we learn about the strength and quality of these relationships?
The quality of a link can be measured by tracking mutual connections and affiliations, and when run through special algorithms can index social factors such as "trust."
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In your visualization gallery, why are some nodes (the individual actors and players) in the center of the picture and others on the margin?
Those in the center have the least number of handshakes to access all others in the network. Those on the periphery need many more handshakes to get to everybody else.
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Why are some nodes are closer than others?
People who share common friends, affiliates or affiliations are tightly connected. The less they have in common, the more remote they are.
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I know who is important; I am a 20-year veteran in the business and know everyone that matters.
You know who is important today, but now you can predict who is going to be important tomorrow. Also: Having objective measurements of the influence and importance of different actors helps you communicate strategies. You can present your ideas, plans and budget considerations to your peers and administrators more effectively, and take precise control over budget and campaign deployment.
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How can we predict future market behavior based on a static network visualization?
With a snapshot of a network we can identify both "frozen areas" that are unlikely to change and areas that are liquid and subject to constant change. By analyzing social pressures and behavior adoptions, we can track probable market scenarios and make strategic assumptions about the future.
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Personality is more important than position in the network. People become central because of their personality.
The structure we are embedded in greatly determines how we can make use of our capabilities and know-how.
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Your work makes me feel scared. Aren't there many possibilities to misuse your tools?
We take every precaution to rule out any misuse of our data and methods, including locking away data from unauthorized access, and requiring FAS.research employees and technical support to sign the following Code of Ethics:
- Social Network Analysis is a century-old scholarly discipline. FAS.research is committed to scientific and academic principles of accuracy and empirical and scholarly trust.
- FAS.research does not accept any orders that foreseeably harm or cause personal disadvantages to individuals.
- FAS.research procures data on public or prominent people only from public media and databases (newspapers, magazines, TV, internet, other publications).
- As a general principle FAS.research does not collect personal data dossiers of any kind.
- Anonymity is preserved for all employee network analysis. No personal data is supplied that could influence the career or future of individuals.
- We arrange in-depth contractual obligations with our clients to ensure data protection and security.
- FAS.research employees are specifically prohibited from passing on customer data or information to third parties.
- All personalized data is destroyed in a professional manner once a project is closed. Only anonymous data remains stored in FAS.research's protected archives.
