Qualitative Narratives of Homophily and Exclusion: Understanding Community Formation ‘From the Inside’

Most current work focuses on quantitative community detection (Srivastav et al., 2024; Roghani & Bouyer, 2023), but open-ended qualitative inquiry can provide rich, underexplored insights (Uzorka & Kalabuki, 2024; Moshoeshoe, 2023). This project would interview members of both homogenous and highly fragmented communities, asking how they perceive the role of similarity, difference, and boundary drawing in their sense of belonging or exclusion. How do people narrate their journey into (or out of) a community? What “invisible” barriers or bridges do they describe? By comparing these narratives with network analysis, we can uncover mismatches between perceived and structural community boundaries—offering actionable insights for fostering inclusion and well-being in both digital and offline spaces.

References:

1. Analyzing Interest-Based Homophily in Online Social Networks Using Community Detection Methods. Manoj Kumar Srivastav, Somsubhra Gupta, Subhranil Som (2024). Educational Administration: Theory and Practice.
2. A Fast Local Balanced Label Diffusion Algorithm for Community Detection in Social Networks. Hamid Roghani, Asgarali Bouyer (2023). IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering.
3. Nurturing the Teaching Soul: An Investigation on How Participation in Online Communities and Social Networks Boosts Academics Well-being, Professional Satisfaction, and Resilience. Afam Uzorka, Kagezi Kalabuki (2024). Social Education Research.
4. Forgotten Narratives: Unearthing Social Dynamics and Building Resilience in Micro-Communities of Lesotho. Motsamai Moshoeshoe (2023). Journal of Asian Multicultural Research for Social Sciences Study.