Sociologists Connect ‘Six Degrees’ on Capitol Hill

by Johanna Ebner, Public Information Office

Washington, DC, June 10, 2005—The social networks between individuals, organizations, groups, and even countries can have a profound effect on our own physical, mental, and emotional health and our personal safety. At a congressional briefing on Capitol Hill, sponsored by the Coalition to Protect Research (CPR), along with the ASA and 12 other organizations¹, sociologists presented their valuable, policy-related research on the importance and consequences of social connections in regards to public health and security.

The briefing, “Six Degrees of Separation: Using Social Network Research to Inform Public Health and National Security,” featured social scientists U.S. Army Major Brian Reed, Fellow, Center for Research on Military Organization at the Department of Sociology, University of Maryland-College Park; Katherine Stovel, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Washington; and Duncan Watts, Associate Professor of Sociology, Columbia University. Reed discussed how researchers working with the military have employed social network analysis to identify and track terrorist networks as well as locate terrorist targets. Watts and Stovel offered their research on social network models to identify how infectious diseases like SARS and STDs among adolescents are transmitted across communities of individuals.

The briefing, moderated by ASA Executive Officer Sally Hillsman, demonstrated the value and importance of social network research. Hillsman discussed the history of social network analysis beginning with social psychologist Stanley Milgram who asked what the probability was that any two people in the world would know each other.

“The significance of social network analysis is increasingly evident as a central tool for improving health, for preventing disease, and potentially for countering terrorism,” said Hillsman. “The theory behind ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ is that each of us is connected by virtue of circumstance or acquaintances through social linkages that involve six or fewer people. While [the social world] is composed of a seemingly endless set of highly diverse parts, we can, for the most part, develop fairly simple theories to understand these complex systems.”

Reed discussed the application of social network theory and resistance networks in regards to the analysis of war-related issues. His research merges the academic with the operational in order to understand the enemy’s networks and to make predictions about the opponent’s behaviors, motivations, and interests.

“The tools and concepts inherent in a network analysis approach allow for a more complete understanding of how such network-based enemy systems behave, and how that behavior is affected by their connectivity,” said Reed. “A requirement on today’s battlefield is to make an assessment of the political and social architecture of the operating environment from both the friendly and the enemy perspective. I believe that there is a value added to a network approach; to analyzing what that enemy looks like and how that enemy fights. By asking what kind of social network is a resistance network, one is afforded a window into that network, thereby understanding what that network looks like, how it is connected, and how to best destabilize it.”

Stovel addressed epidemiological applications for social networks. She discussed romantic/sexual social networks among adolescents. Her research used the Add Health Study and found several existing network structures. The important consequence of this study was in examining the potential for transmission of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) among adolescents, who are a particularly vulnerable population (STDs in women are highest among 15-19 year olds) due to the structure of their peer groups.

“I think there are a lot of things that we learn from networks,” said Stovel. “The most important perhaps is that we really need to rethink individual risk. It’s not just what an individual does—how many partners they have or what kinds of behaviors they engage in—but it’s who they do it with and the macrostructure in which they’re imbedded.”

Watts, author of Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, also covered the epidemiological application of social network research. He discussed why mathematical epidemiology, which does not take networks into consideration, has failed to successfully predict the degree of potential epidemics. He suggests that we may be able to improve our predictive abilities if we increase our understanding of local networks and their role within larger, global networks.

“So it’s not just that an epidemic is diffusing geographically; it is sort of diffusing geographically and then it has these large jumps that are probably associated with somebody hopping on a plane and starting off a new epidemic in a different part of the world,” said Watts. “If we are to understand how these big epidemics spread, we need to understand, or in some way to capture this kind of multi-level structure.”

A transcript of the proceedings is available at: www.cossa.org/CPR/cpr.html.

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