Mario Diani - Logic and Method of Social Network Analysis in Social Movement Research (NetGloW 2014)

Mario Diani (University of Trento, Italy) analyses to what extent social network research can be applied to instances of collective action and grassroots political activism. Hence, social network as a research tool is capable of highlighting some crucial mechanisms and processes of individual participation in collective action. The talk pursued three main objectives: to identify the principal ways of how the idea, the concept and the methaphor of network are used in social movement research; to look at the conceptual relation of notions “networks“ and “social movement“ as well as the concept of collective action; to identify possible analytical methods for understanding collective movements. These three theoretical tools paved the way to analyse collective action networks.