Title: Flora: a visualisation method for analysing personal networks

Authors: Or Rigler; Efrat Blumenfeld-Lieberthal

Addresses: Interdisciplinary Program in the Arts, Yolanda and David Katz Faculty of the Arts, Tel Aviv University, Israel ' Yolanda and David Katz Faculty of the Arts, The Azrieli School of Architecture, Tel Aviv University, P.O. Box 39040, Tel Aviv 6997801, Israel

Abstract: All people are connected. Since the late 20th century scientists have explored the structure of the social network, in order to understand it and to rationalise the stunning fact, that not only we are all connected, we are also very close to one another. In this work, we propose a visual, straightforward method for analysing personal networks, from an egocentric point of view. To test the opportunities of the theory, called 'Flora', we examined it on Henry, a 28 years old man. Flora succeeded in effectively presenting Henry's social world to its full extent, revealing new insights, such as highlighting the fact that Henry's social life is primarily rooted in one particular network among the communities he is engaged with - the homosexual community.

Keywords: social network analysis; SNA; egocentric networks; personal networks; kinship; friendship; visualisation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSSS.2016.076005

International Journal of Society Systems Science, 2016 Vol.8 No.1, pp.78 - 97

Received: 11 Dec 2014
Accepted: 04 May 2015

Published online: 21 Apr 2016 *

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