In 1995 a federally-sponsored agency in Tampa, Florida undertook an applied social network analysis study. This agency, the Technology Deployment Center, needed a study to assess the dozens of economic development organizations in the Tampa Bay area, each with their own missions, strategies, planning and information resources. Social network analysis was selected for its strength in assessing communication, relations, and cooperation, and inter-organizational environments. As a network study of inter-organizational communication, the study presents a snapshot of Tampa Bay area public organization networks in the rapidly changing field of urban economic development. The research also contributed to a master’s thesis.

A small world study is an easy way to introduce students to the challenges and rewards of network studies. Hypotheses about networks can be formulated and easily tested during the course of a term. Here, hypotheses about the communication patterns among undergraduates were tested by creating a small world study with an administrator as a target. Undergraduates were found to prefer to pass small world folders among their own class and did not pass folders to lower classes. Graduate students, faculty and staff were more closely connected to the administration as compared to undergraduate students, and freshmen were particularly isolated in communication networks. Women relied more on homophilous ties to pass folders compared to men, and both sexes relied on homophilous ties when passing folders across occupational boundaries.

We have undertaken the project to understand the configuration, function and role of the Mexican network of power. Previous studies have focused on the recruitment and education of Mexican political leaders and rulers (Camp 1980), the path of their political careers (Smith 1979), their technical skills (Centeno 1994), the creation of cliques (Camp 1990) and the development of networks as an instrument for delivering benefits to their constituents (González-Matinez, 1995). It is our objective here to examine the network's topology, function and centrality values.

As Burt (1998) notes, "social capital is fast becoming a core concept in sociology and political science" . But it has mostly been used in a theoretical context ; only a few researchers have had to confront the issue of measurement. Those that have (e.g., Burt 1992 ; Gulati 1999) have almost universally chosen or constructed a single measure of social capital . The focus has been substantive rather than methodological, so none have systematically considered the range of possible measures. In this short paper, we would like to consider which existing network measures might be used to formalize the notion of social capital.

On January 71, 1997, Michael Lichter posted a message to the SOCNET listserv asking about the origins of the term social capital. This was not the first time social capital had been discussed in that forum, but this particular topic sparked special interest. Although social capital in general continues to be discussed on SOCNET, the discussion about the origins of the term ended on June 11th, 1997. People interested in discussing the topic further should note that a listserv has been set up for that purpose : contact Karl van Meter (bms@ext.iussieu .fr) for information.

Large networks, having thousands of vertices and lines, can be found in many different areas, e .g : genealogies, flow graphs of programs, molecule, computer networks, transportation networks, social networks, intra/inter organisational networks . . . Many standard network algorithms are very time and space consuming and therefore unsuitable for analysis of such networks. In the article we present some approaches to analysis and visualisation of large networks implemented in program Pajek. Some typical examples are also given.