Expanding networks: New reality or new perspective?

The network term has experienced an inflationary usage over the last two decades, both among scholars and in the wider public. The network metaphor has been increasingly used to explain various social phenomena such as friendship or opinion formation, tech-nological innovation or global development. From a scientific perspective, it is widely understood today that social entities such as consumers, voters, firms, organizations or whole states with their choices and behavior form network structures that, in turn, con-dition again choices and actions of these social entities. Parallel to the increasing use of network concepts, the research stream of Social Network Analysis (SNA) has expanded and spans today myriad scholarly fields including biology, anthropology, sociology, history, social psychology, political science, human geography, economics, communica-tion science, and others. Theories, methods and applications from SNA have proven to be useful in studying the behavior of groups of individuals, organizational structures, information processing, or political processes.

The 6th Conference on Applications of Social Network Analysis (ASNA) has the goal to assess the state of the field and discuss current developments and innova-tions in social network research. As for the previous years, ASNA 2009 will primarily provide an interdisciplinary venue with focus on applications of social network analysis. However, submissions on theoretical and methodological issues are also welcome. There are no limitations with respect of scientific disciplines and research questions. However, contributors are especially encouraged to address the conference topic of “Expanding networks: New reality or new perspective?” Has the reality (i.e. the object under study) in the respective field changed and is it becoming more connected? Or were there networks ever since and SNA primarily provides a new analytical perspective?