Disrupting Dark Networks focuses on how social network analysis can be used to craft strategies to track, destabilize and disrupt covert and illegal networks. The book begins with an overview of the key terms and assumptions of social network analysis and various counterinsurgency strategies. The next several chapters introduce readers to algorithms and metrics commonly used by social network analysts. They provide worked examples from four different social network analysis software packages (UCINET, NetDraw, Pajek and ORA) using standard network data sets as well as data from an actual terrorist network that serves as a running example throughout the book. The book concludes by considering the ethics of and various ways that social network analysis can inform counterinsurgency strategizing. By contextualizing these methods in a larger counterinsurgency framework, this book offers scholars and analysts an array of approaches for disrupting dark networks.
• Introduces common terminology and theoretical assumptions of social network analysis • Each of the methodological chapters contain worked examples of social network analysis methods using four different popular social network analysis software packages (UCINET, NetDraw, Pajek and ORA) • Contains a chapter on the ethical use of social network analysis for the disruption of dark networks • Uses a single case study as an example throughout the book
Contents
Part I. Introduction: 1. Social network analysis: an introduction; 2. Strategic options for disrupting dark networks; Part II. Social Network Analysis: Techniques: 3. Getting started with UCINET, NetDraw, Pajek, and ORA; 4. Gathering, recording, and manipulating social networks; Part III. Social Network Analysis: Metrics: 5. Network topography; 6. Cohesion and clustering; 7. Centrality, power, and prestige; 8. Brokers, bridges, and structural holes; 9. Positions, roles, and blockmodels; Part IV. Social Network Analysis: Advances: 10. Dynamic analyses of dark networks; 11. Statistical models for dark networks; Part V. Conclusion: 12. The promise and limits of social network analysis.
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