Social Network Analysis and the US Intelligence Community

My project sought to employ social network analysis in order to map the relationships between the agencies that comprise the federal Intelligence Community, focusing primarily on how well the agencies interact, i.e. the tone or quality of their relationship. A number of current and retired members of the intelligence community were recruited to give their input on this matter. The results were placed into the *ORA social network software in order to generate the analysis.

The final images, which averaged the results of all participants, indicate that the Intelligence Community is a fairly cohesive social network, with neutral and positive relationships between the agencies far outweighing any negative ones, both in number and weight. Each individual participant had a different picture regarding how the agencies interacted within the community as a whole, no doubt based upon personal knowledge and experience. Overall, however, the individual matrices were not widely different, and this is evident in the final visualizations.

For further details, please visit:

https://sites.google.com/site/intelligencecommunitysna/