# Social Network Analysis **Entity class:** Analytical discipline **Domain:** Sociology / network science / intelligence analysis **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition **Social network analysis (SNA)** studies actors and the relationships among them. It measures structures such as degree, betweenness, closeness, components, communities, brokerage, density, reciprocity, homophily, and path length. Unlike a static link chart, SNA can formally compare positions and network-level patterns. Counterterrorism applications examine recruitment, co-offending, communication, finance, travel, and organizational resilience. Results depend on collection boundaries and missing data: the most visible node is not necessarily the most important, and a recorded tie may represent kinship, commerce, coincidence, or investigation rather than operational collaboration. ## Relationships - **visual method:** [[wiki/Link Analysis|Link Analysis]]. - **computational methods:** [[wiki/Graph Analytics|Graph Analytics]], [[wiki/Community Detection|Community Detection]], and [[wiki/Link Prediction|Link Prediction]]. - **applications:** [[wiki/Counterterrorism Intelligence|Counterterrorism Intelligence]] and [[wiki/Radicalization as Social Contagion|Radicalization as Social Contagion]]. - **specialized setting:** [[wiki/Dark Network|Dark Network]] and [[wiki/Covert Network|Covert Network]]. ## Sources / Provenance - [National Institute of Justice — Social networks and domestic radicalization](https://nij.ojp.gov/library/publications/role-social-networks-facilitating-and-preventing-domestic-radicalization-what) - [National Library of Medicine — U.S. Islamist co-offending network](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11152292/)