Introduction

Over the past 50 years there have been a number of methods developed to visualise network information in a manner that demonstrates the important features of the network structure. Visualisation benefits a researcher as it helps communication about the data to third parties as well as facilitating exploration of the data (Brandes et al. , 1999). Figure 12.1 shows the two main ways that researchers represent information about patterns of ties among social actors: matrices and graphs. The result of a data collection exercise using network theory to examine 14 people is a 14 by 14 adjacency matrix of relationships, as shown in Figure 12.1(a). While such a matrix form contains useful information, it is not as useful away of communicating information as Figure 12.1(b). Instead, Figure 12..1(a) addresses questions such as: Are all the nodes connected? Are there many or few ties among the actors? Are there sub-groups or local ‘clusters’ of actors that are tied to one another, but not to other groups? Are there some actors with many ties, and some with few?