Social network analysis in the Lusophone scientific community: Adoption and diffusion of an innovation in the periphery

Social network analysis (SNA) has been widely disseminated in the USA and Europe since the 1970’s, and it has been growing exponentially. However, and despite the increasing mobility of researchers and the expansion of the Internet, SNA has emerged late in Lusophone countries. Only in the 21^st century we can observe an important scientific production with applications of SNA. Notwithstanding, the presence of scientific production of Lusophone social network analysts in the international scene, is still very weak.  

Our perspective is to look at the use and application of SNA by Lusophone researchers as the adoption of an innovation. The adoption and diffusion of any innovation and of a scientific methodology in particular, is a social activity and as such constrained by the structure of social relations in which actors are embedded. Hence, the analysis of the interdependencies among Lusophone social network researchers, and among those and international social network researchers, through the use of SNA, seems to be the most adequate methodological strategy. After identifying Lusophone researchers who authored or co-authored articles using applications of SNA , we sent them an online questionnaire. Results show that the professional and academic trajectory of Lusophone social networkers, as well as their collaboration and co-authorship relational patterns, are still very much directed to national institutions and colleagues. The results of our study are consistent  with those saying that despite trends towards globalization, high income countries still dominate social science knowledge production (Gingras 2002). It has been said that   international collaborative networks grew at a spectacular rate between 1990 and 2000 (Wagner and Leyderdorff 2006) but this network, like many others, organizes through a preferential attachment mechanism: in spite of a growing centre it will continue to take longer, and represent  higher costs , for the periphery to get to the centre