USING SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS TO EXAMINE INSTITUTIONAL POWER, INFLUENCE AND GATEKEEPING IN GEOSCIENCE

Social network analysis (SNA) is a powerful tool for modeling communities. Because SNA allows for mapping of interactions at different scales, it can be used to examine individual relationships like research collaborations and citation practices as well as institutional-scale practices like academic hiring networks. For example, by mapping demographic information like gender, race/ethnicity or first-generation status onto a network model, we can begin to explore how identity shapes an individual’s position within their research community. In this project, SNA is used to examine institutional power, influence, and gatekeeping in academic hiring networks by mapping geoscience faculty placements at US academic institutions. The academic pathway of each individual in the analysis includes their current institution, the institution where they earned their doctorate, and their subfield within geoscience. Modeling this network allows us to examine structural inequities such as the outsized influence of a limited number of graduate program as well as differences among subfields.