Europe and North America Regional GCED Network

Overview of Methodology
To systematically map relationships among key GCED actors, we followed two
parallel methodological approaches: social network analysis and digital methods.
First, using data from structured interviews with organizations' representatives, we
mapped the relationships of mutual cooperation, technical and scientific information
exchange, and meetings between GCED actors. Secondly, drawing on data from
organizational websites and Twitter, we mapped digital networks among actors,
which enabled us to see actors and relations that might otherwise be hidden,
ignored, or disregarded.
Social network analysis of GCED actors
We began our sample selection at an international meeting of GCED practitioners
in Montreal. We started from the list of organizations that participated in the
Montreal exercise and the organizations they named as collaborators. In total,
54 organizations constitute our study sample. Of these, we interviewed 45
organizations, 26 from Europe and 19 from North America - a response rate of 83%.
We studied three networks that emerged in the data, based on the relations and
activities of the actors: mutual collaboration, technical information sharing, and
meetings between organizations.
• Key global and local network patterns and organizations' positions in the
network were analyzed. Our research found that organizations based in
the same geographical area tend to have more relations, especially for the
meeting networks. However, for scientific and information exchange, actors
tend to interact at almost the same levels with organizations outside and
inside their geographical area (see Graph 1, 2, 3 in appendix A). The relations
were most dense in knowledge sharing activities, indicating an important
feature of the network and GCED in the European and North American region.
• Regarding the three types of networks analyzed, data showed that meetings
and information exchanges have a low level of overlap. This means that
the organizations that exchange technical and scientific information do not
necessarily meet to discuss GCED related topics.
• The structure of the network reflects a core-periphery model of interaction
where there is:
- High density of connection at the centre and lower level of
connection in the periphery.
- Low level of clustering: the network cannot be easily divided into
smaller subgroups based on common characteristics of the
organizations. This suggests that even though there are differences
in the number of connections among organizations at the centre of
the network and those with fewer connections, it was not possible to
divide the network into smaller subgroups based on common
008ㆍ009