The potential of network analysis in inclusion research was discussed at the 'III' conference.
On August 5, as part of the VI International Scientific Conference "Interaction. Integration. Inclusion: At the Crossroads of Knowledge and Values," a section entitled "Social Inclusion, Community Boundaries, and Knowledge Circulation: The Possibilities of Network Analysis" was held, led by laboratory staff members Irina Pavlova, Natalia Matveeva, and Anton Sizov.
The section was united by a common question: how network analysis helps us understand the mechanisms by which community boundaries are formed, inclusion and exclusion are reproduced, and knowledge and resources circulate. The presentations covered various fields—from the school classroom to the national higher education system—but converged in their desire to operationalize complex social concepts through the structure of connections.
Communities, Capital, and Resource Circulation. Several presentations explored how network connections distribute resources and opportunities. A presentation on ego-network analysis of social capital (Daria Maltseva, Irina Pavlova, Maria Rodionova, Anton Sizov) presented name-, position-, and resource-generating methods and outlined a gap in the domestic research field—the need to test methods for studying the network social capital of Russians. Lilia Kuzina and Valentina Polyakova, using a case study of a district environmental community, demonstrated how grassroots environments become a source of user innovation—from renovations and upcycling to food sharing.
Boundaries and Fragmentation of Professions and Institutions. Another series of presentations explored how symbolic and structural boundaries are constructed. Timur Andreev, using a mixed-methods design (250 profiles and 32 interviews), described a "skeleton and muscles" structure that compensates for the epistemological fragmentation of practical psychology. Lika Kapustina tested the theory of university convergence using OpenAlex data from 1991 to 2024 and documented a divergence of trends: co-authorship networks bring universities closer together, while publication output maintains inequality. Petr Sapozhnikov and Ivan Klimov presented an approach to thematic segmentation of literature on the role of private capital in philanthropy, built on the BERTopic model and OpenAlex data. In a separate presentation, Irina Pavlova presented a bibliometric map of healthy aging research, identifying four thematic clusters and a three-level field model.
Inclusion and Disruptions at the Interaction Level. Another block focused on inclusion and exclusion in immediate social relationships. Polina Ermolaeva and Artem Oganyan, using dyadic modeling of data on multicultural school classes, revealed the asymmetry of interethnic preferences and the ambiguous role of civic identity. Daniil Kovalev, using a multimodal analysis of 3,969 job postings, exposed the gap between the educational preparation of social workers and the actual requirements of employers.
The presentations demonstrated that network analysis works not only as a tool for describing structures but also as a way to operationalize complex social concepts—from social capital to professional jurisdictions.
The speakers' presentations are available in the recording:
Laboratory team members were also involved in the work of other sections of the conference. Sergey Davydov led the section “Turbulent media companies, turbulent audiences: media production and media consumption in Russia 2020–2026”, dedicated to how, in turbulent periods, social challenges and global technological development – primarily tools of generative artificial intelligence – transform the processes of production and consumption of media content and force participants in media communications to either adapt or actively change the rules of the game.
Tamara Shcheglova and Kirill Shkolnik spoke at the section “Digital traces as social knowledge: methods, values and new objects of analysis.” Tamara’s report was devoted to the methodological possibilities of measuring the feeling of safety in the city: based on the material of social media discourse about city parks, a system of indicators of the feeling of (in)security, reconstructed from user statements, was proposed. Kirill addressed the methodological and ethical limitations of collecting digital traces on the TikTok platform: using the example of comments on psychological self-help techniques, he raised questions about digital inequality in the research community, the architectural limitations of the platform and the boundaries of its use as a research field in Russia.
