Tracking, Destabilizing and Disrupting Dark Networks with Social Networks Analysis

Abstract

This guide introduces how to use social network analysis to develop strategies for tracking and disrupting dark networks (i.e., criminal, terrorist networks). While much of its focus is on social network analysis, it is more than a methodological handbook. It includes a strategic emphasis as well. It is one thing to learn how to estimate basic social network analysis metrics. It is quite another to learn how to place such metrics within a larger strategic framework. That is why this introduction begins by briefly outlining how we understand social network analysis’s strategic role for destabilizing and disrupting networks. (It is a topic that we turn to in more detail in the final chapter.) After this outline, it turns to the unique challenges that dark networks pose for analysts, including those employing social network analysis. It concludes with an overview of what is to come in the following chapters.