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Futures in Research

Bridging disciplines: Integrating neuroscience and social network analysis in communication science

Elisa Baek
University of Southern California

Communication Science boasts a long history of being interdisciplinary, contributing to the richness and depth of our understanding of human communication behavior. For example, insights from sociology were incorporated to develop network models of communication, such as the Diffusion of Innovations (Rogers, 1962), laying early foundations for the field. In the last decade, researchers have also begun using neuroscientific tools to gain insight into questions of interest in communication science (Weber, Eden, Huskey, Mangus & Falk, 2015; Falk, 2013). More recently, there has been a movement toward incorporating methods and approaches from neuroscience with social network analysis for a multi-layered approach that uniquely incorporates individuals' neurobiology with structures of their social environments to address questions of interest to communication scholars. This working group will discuss how these interdisciplinary methods can be effectively integrated to advance the field of communication. Specific questions include: 1) What are some ways that neuroscientific tools in conjunction with social network analysis can enhance our understanding of specific communication processes? 2) What are the potential challenges and limitations of such a multi-layered approach? Our goal is to develop a working paper that introduces this approach to communication scholars, outlining its promises and challenges.