Skip to content
finwave Docs

Social Network Analysis

What you’ll learn

Section titled “What you’ll learn”
  • What Social Network Analysis shows and why it matters
  • How co-occurrence data drives the network graph
  • What the Louvain algorithm detects in your data
  • How to interpret the in-browser visualization

What is Social Network Analysis?

Section titled “What is Social Network Analysis?”

Social Network Analysis generates an interactive network graph of your population based on co-occurrence data. Individuals who have been observed together appear as connected nodes, and the strength of their connection reflects how frequently they co-occur. The tool also runs community detection to identify clusters of individuals that associate more closely with each other than with the rest of the population.

This is valuable for understanding social structure — identifying stable social groups, tracking changes in association patterns over time, and discovering which individuals serve as connectors between groups.

How it works

Section titled “How it works”

The analysis builds the network from your population’s co-occurrence records. Each time two individuals appear in the same encounter, that counts as a co-occurrence. The more frequently two individuals are observed together, the stronger their connection in the network.

The resulting graph shows:

  • Nodes — one per individual, sized or labeled by name or ID
  • Edges — connections between individuals who have co-occurred, with thickness reflecting frequency
  • Communities — color-coded clusters identified by the detection algorithm

Community detection

Section titled “Community detection”

The tool uses the Louvain algorithm to detect communities within the network. Louvain is a widely used method for finding groups of nodes that are more densely connected to each other than to the rest of the network.

Communities are displayed as color-coded groups in the visualization. Each community represents a cluster of individuals that associate more frequently with each other. These often correspond to real social units — family groups, foraging parties, or other stable associations.

Using the visualization

Section titled “Using the visualization”

The social network graph renders in your browser as an interactive visualization. You can:

  • Pan and zoom to explore different areas of the network
  • Hover over nodes to see individual details and their connections
  • Identify peripheral individuals who have few connections, which may indicate solitary behavior or insufficient observation data
  • Spot bridge individuals who connect otherwise separate communities

Access

Section titled “Access”

Social Network Analysis is a Workbench tool that requires finwave Pro. Your population administrator controls which roles can access it through the Workbench Access settings.

By default, administrators and professionals have access. Experts and novices do not unless explicitly granted.

Section titled “Related”