Gender Networks Shiny App, University of Manchester

Version 1.0.0

GitHub project: https://github.com/UoMResearchIT/Gender-Networks-Shiny-App

Authors

Elisa Bellotti elisa.bellotti@manchester.ac.uk [author, Principal Investigator]*
Tomas Diviak tomas.diviak@manchester.ac.uk [author, Co-Investigator]
Tomas Lintner tomas.lintner@manchester.ac.uk [author, Research Associate]
David Schoch david.schoch@cynkra.com [collaborator]
Martin Herrerias martin.herreriasazcue@manchester.ac.uk [creator]

Description

The app “Gender Networks” has been developed within the context of the project “Gender inequalities: the role of social networks in gendered interactions and social structures” funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (UKRI-ESRC) responsive mode: secondary data analysis (R131805: 01/04/2025-31/03/2027).

The overall project aims to analyse the position that people of different genders may occupy in social networks, where social networks visually represent relationships connecting individuals in a bounded setting—for example, students who are friends with each other in classrooms, employees who advise each other in offices and teams, criminals who co-offend in illicit networks.

To do so, the project collects whole social network data that are publicly available, or that are made available to the project by relevant data-controllers, and re-analyse them through a gender lens by looking, for example, at the gender segregation in schools, the central or peripheral position of women/men in offices and teams, the role of women/men in criminal/illicit networks.

The GenderNetworks app allows the users to explore and visualise social networks by distinguishing the gender of the individual and the type of relationships connecting them. Currently we aim to visualise social networks that link students in classes, employees in organizations, and criminals in illicit enterprises, although the list may grow in time.

As the project progresses, new datasets can also be added, so that the data repository and the app outlive the duration of the funded grant. Links to download public datasets will be provided in the “Summary Tab”, others might only be accessible through the app.

If you have social network data with gender characteristics of individuals, and would like to make them available here, please contact the research team.

How to use the app

On the left of this landing page, you can find several tabs with which you can select and explore the stored social network datasets.

The blue box allows you to select the dataset you would like to visualise and explore. To do so you need to:

1. Select the category of the dataset. In the dropdown window you can choose the category of networks you want to choose from, for example school networks, organizational networks, criminal networks. The selection will filter only the datasets belonging to the chosen category.

2. Select the dataset. There might be one or more datasets for each category. The selection will update the Dataset Description tab, with information about the sources, links for download (in the case of public datasets), and other general metadata.

3. Select the country. Some datasets contain data from various countries (i.e. social networks of classrooms from schools in several countries). In the dropdown window you can choose the country of the social networks you want to explore. Where the data only come from a single country, there will be only one selection available. The selection will filter only the datasets belonging to the chosen category.

4. Select the network. Some datasets contain data from various networks (i.e. several classrooms in the same school, several offices in the same organization). In the dropdown window you can select the network you want to visualise and explore. The selection will filter only the chosen network.

5. Select the relationship. Some networks contain information from different types of both positive and negative relationships, for example friendship/avoidance/advice/socialising etc, or of the same relationship at different points in time, for example friendship at Time 1, at Time 2, etc. Where these options are available, you can select the type of relationship you want to visualise and explore.

   The selection will filter the chosen relationship, and you can only select one relationship per time.

Once you have selected the four options above, the app will automatically load the network of your choice. This can then be explored by clicking the tabs above the box, which will provide the following information:

1. Dataset Description. This tab contains static information about the chosen dataset: when and where the data were collected, how many networks are contained in the data, what type of relationships the data report on, and the reference and link (where available) to the original dataset.

2. Network Visualization. This tab produces a visualization of the chosen relationship, and plots the gender distribution of the individuals included in that network.

   It also contains a table with summary descriptive statistics of the chosen network and relationship, including [size, density, n. of components, centralization] and a brief explanation of these measures in lay terms.

3. Dataset Summary. Where the selected dataset contains more than one network (for example, several classrooms from the same school, several teams in the same organization), this tab produces a table with the summary statistics reported in the Network Visualization tab, for all the networks contained in the chosen dataset. You can rank networks for each available statistic (ascending or descending), for example by size or density.

We are keen to hear what you think about the app! If you have any feedback or suggestion, please contact the research team