Using social network analysis to understand the creative and cultural industries

This chapter explores the ways in which social network analysis (SNA) can be used to understand the creative industries. Networks are crucial to the effective functioning of the creative and cultural industries (CCIs) and decades of research have highlighted this importance for activities across the value chain. SNA allows researchers to schematically trace connections between different agents in the CCIs to understand the composition of networks, relationships between individuals and groups of nodes, and statistically identify communities. The chapter outlines the range of ways in which SNA has been applied to the CCIs by reviewing a range of literature which reports its use. A more detailed application of SNA research is provided that uses data on UK creative companies to explore how they define their activities using Standard Industrial Classification codes. In so doing the chapter highlights some of the drawbacks inherent in applying SNA to the CCIs.