Canal-U

Investigating the dynamic interaction between actors and network context / Tom Snijders

Investigating the dynamic interaction between actors and network context / Tom Snijders, in colloque "Comprendre les mondes sociaux 2014", organisé par Le Labex Structuration des Mondes Sociaux (SMS) de l'Université Toulouse Jean-Jaurès-campus Mirail, Toulouse, Centre de congrès Pierre Baudis, 7-9 avril 2014.

Social actors, human as well as corporate, need their network context to operate and to try and achieve their goals. Embedded in social networks, they change their network ties in dependence of their position in the network and attributes of themselves and of their network partners; simultaneously, they change their behaviour and other characteristics in dependence of the same features. The empirical investigation of this can be supported by statistical models for the interdependent dynamics -the "coevolution"- of the network ties and their behaviour and other characteristics, as have been developed in Snijders (2001) and Steglich, Snijders and Pearson (2010). These models have been applied in studies of, e.g., adolescent behaviour, policy networks, and online social networks. An overview of the model is given and of the type of results obtained.