Detecting the Information structure of a community. methodological insights from social network and content analysis

The paper presents the preliminary findings of a wider research aimed at drawing a methodology of investigation about the information structure of a community. It summarizes the theoretical insights coming from the literature about the double grounds of analysis involved in the project: the Social Network Analysis, useful to provide a representation of the structural composition of a community, and to identify social dynamics and roles; and the Content Analysis, employed to map the “topical content” of the information flow inside the community, to broaden the investigation from the “who” and “how” of the communication patterns to the “what” of the information flow