Military Review English Edition November-December 2014 | Page 95

ENTANGLEMENT

2nd Platoon

1st Platoon
Barnes

3rd Platoon
Eton

Aran

Kane

Teeps

Fells

Jackson

Neebles
Hightower

Parker
Kellogg

Directed ties indicating soldiers observing methamphetamine users
Relationship Data
Hightower
Neebles
Nodal out-degree: 3
Nodal out-degree: 6
Degree centrality: .2
Degree centrality: .6
Fells
Nodal out-degree: 6
Degree centrality: .6

Kellogg, Parker, Barnes,
and Eton
Nodal in-degree: 2
Degree prestige: .2

Key
Arrows point from witnesses to users
g (network size) = 11
Out-degree = The number of soldiers an individual observed using
drugs
In-degree = The number of soldiers that observed an individual using
drugs
Degree centrality = n/(g-1) = measure of prominence (1.0 maximum)
Degree prestige = n/(g-1) = measure of prominence (1.0 maximum)

Affiliation Network (Observed Drug Use)
company-wide misconduct, taken from the sworn
statements given by some of the suspects. The brigade’s
legal section used this data to create two separate sociograms—visual depictions of a social network. Figure 1
represents an affiliation network—the involvement of a
set of actors in a particular social event—depicting which
soldiers sold the drug to whom. The relational lines, with
arrows pointing at the buyers, are overlaid against the
division of the unit into its three platoons. The size of the
circle representing each soldier-node is a function of the
number of outward-directed links he has. Barnes, for example, is the largest circle because he sold to the greatest
number of other soldiers (eight). Manipulating the size
of the circle, while not critical, helps visualize the relative
weight of the hubs and other nodes.
In this sociogram, a soldier’s nodal out-degree represents the number of other soldiers in the network to
whom he sold the drugs; conversely, in-degree represents the number of soldiers from whom a particular
soldier-node purchased drugs. The degree centrality
value indicates how prominent an individual node is
within the network by calculating the proportion of
MILITARY REVIEW  November-December 2014

the whole network to which he directs a tie (here, sells
drugs to another node).
Figure 2 depicts this affiliation network from a
slightly different perspective: who has been observed
using the drugs, and by whom. In this sociogram, a
soldier’s nodal out-degree is the number of soldiers
that a particular node observed using the drugs,
whereas his in-degree represents the number of other
soldiers who observed this node using drugs. His centrality, as one measure of his prominence, is calculated
as a proportion of the network this node witnessed
using drugs.
These affiliation network sociograms were built
only from the information gleaned from multiple law
enforcement interviews and the resulting sworn statements provided by the suspected soldiers. Additional
layers of data that could be depicted, if evidence was
available, include the amount of methamphetamines
sold to each individual in the network; the number of
transactions per individual buyer; the same sociogram
over multiple points in time or by location, which
shows whether the network animates or changes over
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