SNA assignment, Using SNA in Politics

Before attending SNA in organisation last weekend, I was thinking that we are going to learn about social media and the impact of them in today’s world. Well obviously I was wrong. I understood that SNA is about how networks and humans are organised.  It is a methodology that provides quantitative and qualitative tools and data which someone can Identify and measure the relationships and patterns of connections.  It is obviously powerful tool to help us understand all the network patterns. The analysis can be used to analyse any kind of network. I think it can be useful in analysing Political conflicts.

When a bill wants to be passed in parliament, when political parties are clashing over certain issues SNA can help us to uncover conflicts of interests between political parties, lobbyists, unions, and businesses. It helps indemnifying of hidden connections, influencers, and leaders. By understanding bonding and bridging we can analyse the density of that group and find hidden possible connections between other groups. Also we can understand which party holds more power. Moreover, we can find the type of connections between each party, for example if it’s directed or undirected.

By evaluating that group or network, we can understand which party is more valuable for us to reach out first, make possible allies or oppose against. By understanding the SNA we can build up strategic partnerships, reach out to influencers in order to resolve the conflicts.

This approach might have some weaknesses or risks:

We might make wrong evaluation base on an incomplete data. 

It might be misused or abused for unethical approaches.

Although SNA is powerful tool, it has it’s own risk and disadvantages. It needs to be understood clearly, data need to be complete in order to increase the effectiveness of analysis. It certainly can help us reduce the conflicts between political parties and other bodies and find out about their intentions of having such position on certain issue.