The pilot area of Auronzo di Cadore (Belluno) - Università Ca

Box 2
SNA in brief
3 / Phase 1 / Actors’ Analysis
Social network analysis (SNA) focuses on relationships among social
entities, and on the patterns and implications of social relationships.
It entails a representation of social environment in terms of patterns
and regularities in relationships amongst interacting units (Wasserman
& Faust, 1999; Scott, 2000).
Main outputs / There are three main outputs from the SNA phase,
which will be an input into the preparatory phase for the Creative System
Modelling (CSM) exercise. / A list of key stakeholders/experts to be
involved in the next phases of NetSyMoD. This will limit the number of
participants to a manageable size, and ensure that no important actors
are left out of the exercise. / The analysis of power will highlight potentially
problematic actors and relations, whom the facilitator will need
to actively manage during the creative system modelling workshop. / A
conflict analysis on the basis of position and roles of actors within the
network, with the purpose of identifying key alleys and/or opponents,
and actors who are opinion setters.
SNA unfolds in five phases: participants’ preliminary identification, interviews
with a sample of stakeholders, successive characterisation of their
social network, identification of initial scenarios and criteria for their evaluation,
and actors’ final selection for the workshops.
3.1 / Participants’ identification
After a couple of preliminary visits to the field, the destination was charaterised
in terms of categories and main activities, that should have a stake
in the workshop in an attempt to represent all interests.
Given the very nature of the participatory process, designed to promote
everyone’s contribution, the number of attendances was narrowed to 20
on the basis of the organisers’ previous experiences in similar environment.
In addition, the organisers sought to include also a small sample of
participants that live outside the Municipality – but who could nevertheless
contribute to the debate because of their expertise in the matter under discussion.
Table 1 below illustrates the five main categories and the 20 subcategories
identified as potentially relevant participants of the workshop.
Given the competitiveness and different developments of the two main
20