The study of social networks was originated in social and business communities. In recent years, social network research has advanced significantly; the development of sophisticated techniques for Social Network Analysis and Mining (SNAM) has been highly influenced by the online social Web sites, email logs, phone logs and instant messaging systems, which are widely analyzed using graph theory and machine learning techniques. People perceive the Web increasingly as a social medium that fosters interaction among people, sharing of experiences and knowledge, group activities, community formation and evolution. This has led to a rising prominence of SNAM in academia, politics, homeland security and business. This follows the pattern of known entities of our society that have evolved into networks in which actors are increasingly dependent on their structural embedding General areas of interest to the book include information science and mathematics, communication studies, business and organizational studies, sociology, psychology, anthropology, applied linguistics, biology and medicine.
