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At its most basic level, a network is any connection to anything else. In order for a network to be meaningful, it has to be a system of elements or entities that are connected by relationships. These relationships are the defining feature of networks, as opposed to content or components. People study networks because they believe that the network itself is in some way significant and that the parts that make up the network are interdependent, not independent. Network analysis can be used to identify emerging patterns within a dataset. One kind of network analysis is social network analysis, which analyzes social structures through the use of networks.
Gephi. Gephi is a software for network analysis and data visualization and enables users to explore, analyze, spatialize, filter, cluster, manipulate, and export all types of networks. Some of the metrics Gephi offers are between centrality, closeness, diameter, clustering coefficient, pagerank, community detection/modularity, random generators, and shortest path. This platform also enables users to visualize how networks changed over time by manipulating an embedded timeline.
Palladio. Created by a team at Stanford University, Palladio is a user-friendly tool for conducting network and spatial analyses. To create a Palladio project, users can copy and paste spreadsheets; drag-and-drop to upload tabular data; or to link to a file in a public Dropbox folder. Data can be visualized in several ways: as a map, graph, table, or gallery.
For a comprehensive review of major social network analysis and visualization tools, see Top 30 Social Network Analysis & Visualization Tools.
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