[R] Social network analysis, retrieve brokered nodes

[Haeussler Thomas]

Hi,

I am working with R’s sna package to do a brokerage analysis of a social 
network. Basically, I would like to know whether there is a possibility 
to retrieve the brokered nodes.

I have a dataset of 244 nodes which is subdivided into two communities. 
For theoretical reasons I’m currently only interested in brokers between 
the two communities, in the present case “representatives” and 
“gatekeepers” (Gould & Fernandez, 1989). The brokerage command in sna 
generates a wealth of informative output, but for the purposes of my 
analysis I would like to have a closer look at the specific set of nodes 
that are connected by the brokers, above all the nodes to which a 
gatekeeper connects.

In standard brokerage notation I am mainly interested in the receiver, 
i.e. the “A” that sits to the right in the two-path B -> A -> A  (B is 
the sender from community 1, A in the middle of the notation is the 
gatekeeper in community 2, A to the right is the receiver). Is there a 
way to display this information in the sna package?

I’ve resorted to a couple of manual analyses using the original matrices 
but I don’t seem to be getting the same results in terms of aggregate 
values and I have therefore refrained from making more detailed 
statements about the nodes, their attributes, etc.

Thanks!
Tom

-- 
Thomas Haeussler
Postdoctoral researcher

Institute of Communication and Media Studies
Fabrikstrasse 8
University of Bern
Switzerland

Tel.: +41 (0)31 631 38 47
Fax: +41 (0)31 631 43 40

mailto: thomas.haeussler at ikmb.unibe.ch