A Method of Social Network Analysis Using Formal Concept Analysis and Ego-Centric Networks

Abstract

Social Network Analysis is a field of sociology, where networks, such as human relations, are investigated in order to understand roles of persons in social context. In this paper, we propose a method for this aim using the method of formal concept analysis (FCA) and ego-centric networks. FCA is a formal tool which extinguishes concepts from instances and their attributes. Our proposed method deals with persons in a network as instances and some graph structure appeared in a local network, which is called an ego-centric network, of a person as attributes. It clarifies the relationship between social nature and human relationship structure possessed by each individual in the network relationships with friends. We examined the proposal method using data acquired by a questionnaire on friendship and social attributes to students. Some groups characterized by the method had statistically significant ratio of students who possess some social attributes.