Going Breiger on White: Harrison C. White’s identity in Social Network Science

Harrison C. White (HCW) has been an influential figure in Social Network Science (SNS), with contributions in blockmodeling, market models, and general theory. How did he position himself into SNS, and how exactly were his contributions received in the domain? These are questions about the identity of HCW. I answer them empirically using citation data and a dualistic approach. I employ a dynamic topic model to infer five subdomains of SNS. Then I construct networks of citing papers and cited references and quantify the positions of HCW’s publications in them. It turns out that HCW actively published in two particular subdomains and received heightened attention there.