Volume 13 (2012): Issue 1 (January 2012)

In this paper, we employ archival materials from multiple institutional sources to reconstruct the dynamic network of interorganizational collaboration that emerged in response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster of late 2005. Over the period from initial storm formation through the first week following landfall in Louisiana, we record active participation by over 1,500 organizations in response activities. We here conduct an exploratory analysis of the growth and evolution of the network of collaboration among responding organizations, an identification of organizations that emerged as central actors in the response process, and the cohesive subgroups that crystallized within the larger network. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of several issues related to the use of archival methods in research on interorganizational networks in disaster settings, and to the use of automated methods for network extraction.

Advances in text analysis, particularly the ability to extract network based information from texts, is enabling researches to conduct detailed socio-cultural ethnographies rapidly by retrieving characteristic descriptions from texts and fusing the results from varied sources. We describe this process and illustrate it in the context of conflict in the Sudan. We show how network information can be extracted from vast quantities of unstructured texts-based information using computer assisted processes. This is illustrated by an examination of changes in the political networks in Sudan as extracted from the Sudan Tribune. We find that this approach enables rapid high level assessment of a socio-cultural environment, generates results that are viewed as accurate by subject matter experts, and match actual historical events. The relative value of this socio-cultural analysis approach is discussed.