Communication network analysis to advance mapping ‘sport for development and peace’ complexity: Cohesion and leadership

Abstract

Attempts to map the global sport for development and peace field have revealed only some aspects of its complex organisational structure, failing to depict the web of relations in which diverse stakeholders are embedded. Based on the principles of complex systems, this study applies a communication network perspective and the analytical instruments of hyperlink network analysis to advance mapping sport for development and peace complexity and to reveal the significance of the stakeholders’ structure for power relations, cohesion and leadership processes in the sport for development and peace field. The research extends the current mapping by depicting an international network of 520 organisations and 2279 links. The stakeholders differ according to the level of involvement in sport for development and peace practice, the field of main activities, and origins (the global North and South). The density of the network is extremely sparse, which means that less than 1% of all possible ties are realised. Furthermore, it ratifies the leading role of the global North in sport for development and peace efforts. Findings also disclose difficulties in establishing relations between delivery organisations that can be attributed to competitive context and shortage of resources. The study provides clarification of existing power relations and helps to find development strategies and a more inclusive and equitable policy formulation aimed to create equal opportunities for leadership.

Keywords

communication hyperlink mapping social network analysis sport for development and peace

Introduction

Sport for development and peace (SDP) is a field of activities in which sport, including non-competitive physical activity in the form of play, is a tool to address the non-sporting objectives of social development and peace-building (Giulianotti et al., 2016; Kidd, 2008; Lindsey et al., 2017; Lyras and Welty Peachey, 2011; SDP International Working Group (IWG), 2008). During the last three decades, the SDP field has grown in size and risen in status, making a great leap forward from being poorly coordinated and weakly connected to mainstream development efforts to becoming institutionalised and proliferating in the international development sector (Black, 2019; Darnell et al., 2019; Giulianotti et al., 2019; Kidd, 2008).

The acknowledgement of SDP in mainstream development policies (Lindsey and Darby, 2019; SDP IWG, 2008) has not been followed by detailed global mapping of SDP agencies, and the field is characterised as ‘under-documented’ (Lindsey et al., 2017: 27). The structure of the global SDP field has been described from a qualitative perspective, providing the typology of SDP stakeholders and an analysis of their relations (Bardocz-Bencsik and Doczi, 2019; Giulianotti, 2011a, 2011b, 2019; Giulianotti et al., 2016; Levermore and Beacom, 2009; Straume, 2019). These studies have made important contributions to understanding the SDP phenomenon but have failed to address the need to collect quantitative data about the scope and level of involvement (Donnelly et al., 2011). Indeed, attempts to create large-scale descriptions of the global SDP field have recently been initiated by providing comprehensive literature reviews (Cronin, 2011; Schulenkorf et al., 2016), classifying organisations involved in grassroots activities (Svensson and Woods, 2017) and describing SDP non-governmental organisations (NGOs) (Suzuki, 2019). The collection of quantitative knowledge has focused on particular types of SDP stakeholders but has not mapped the diverse array of agencies that do not necessarily implement on-ground projects but enable and support SDP delivery by funding, policy-making, knowledge and legitimisation (Giulianotti, 2011a, 2011b; Giulianotti et al., 2016; Levermore and Beacom, 2009).

The mapping of SDP diversity matters because SDP projects are often the result of joint efforts by multiple SDP stakeholders, coming from public, private and civil society domains and representing various social fields, including sport, development, peacebuilding and education (Black, 2019; Burnett, 2017; Giulianotti et al., 2016; Huffman et al., 2019; Lindsey et al., 2017). While there is a commitment within the qualitative studies to deepen understanding of the diversity and interconnections of SDP stakeholders, quantitative approaches are still far from reaching those advancements in favour of revealing the complexity of the SDP field.

The mapping of the structural complexity of the SDP field – locating diverse stakeholders worldwide and describing the networks they form – would facilitate clarification of existing power relations and help to find development strategies and a more inclusive and equitable policy formulation. It also would improve our ability to surface interconnection patterns, which, in turn, would enhance the generation of equal opportunities for collaborations and leadership. The SDP stakeholders’ networks stand as the infrastructures with potential to support knowledge exchange and collaboration when agencies do not have sufficient resources or capacity to act alone (Hambrick et al., 2019; Lindsey and Banda, 2011; Lindsey and Bello Bitugu, 2019). Advances in coordination and integration of SDP stakeholders throughout the field are needed for ‘stronger and more sustainable work’ in pursuit of social development goals (Giulianotti, 2019: 33). Professional unity in the field might be of primary importance for SDP advocacy, regarding the persisting ‘uncertainties surrounding the effectiveness of SDP work’ (Hayhurst et al., 2016: 9; emphasis in original) and the advocacy potential of transnational networks (Hayhurst et al., 2011; Keck and Sikkink, 1999).

Knowledge about the leaders (i.e. organisations) connected to and recognised by many others in the global SDP field would provide an opportunity to envisage the direction of development in the SDP field and pinpoint those who might be excluded from resources and decision-making processes. With the closure of the United Nations Office on Sport for Development and Peace (UNOSDP) in 2017 (Burnett, 2017), it would be desirable to count on the presence of transnational shared leadership who could ‘pull together multifarious stakeholders, help establish a clear vision for the sector, and develop unifying strategies, partnerships, and programs’ (Giulianotti et al., 2019: 421). The direction of development in the SDP field highly depends on the kind of new leaders, in so far as the ideas about development ‘inevitably bear the imprint of those who have articulated them, and are therefore inclined to empower some and disempower others’ (Black, 2010: 125). In particular, accounts of leadership are needed to disclose inequality in the global South and North relations that were marked by colonising tendencies, subjugating voices and knowledge from practitioners in the global South and creating a dominant position for the global North in policies, governance and financial resources (Darnell and Hayhurst, 2012; Hayhurst, 2009; Lindsey et al., 2017; McSweeney et al., 2019; Nicholls et al., 2011).

Unfortunately, the growth in academic publications in the area since the year 2000 (Schulenkorf et al., 2016) has not resulted in a systematic global mapping of SDP stakeholders and their interconnections. The scarce attention given to the topic might be attributed to the reported methodological difficulties related to the complexity of the SDP field (Bardocz-Bencsik and Doczi, 2019; Lindsey et al., 2017). To advance SDP mapping, we rely on a communication network perspective, largely informed by the network society theory (Van Dijk, 2005, 2012, 2013a, 2013b), representational communication theory and the analytical instruments of hyperlink network analysis, fruitfully applied to depict complex inter-organisational relations in diverse areas of human development (Pilny and Shumate, 2012; Shumate and Contractor, 2014; Shumate and Dewitt, 2008; Shumate and Lipp, 2008; Shumate and O’Connor, 2010; Shumate et al., 2017). Communication and information continue to have a fundamental role in establishing networks, which in their turn have the structural and power distribution implications for society (Castells, 2010; Van Dijk, 2005, 2012). As Fuchs argues, networks ‘are structures of communication’, and they shape social systems (2007: 73). The present study focuses on online media networks because new information and communication technologies (ICT) facilitate the expansion of transnational networks (Van Dijk, 2012). The assessment of power relations embedded in the new ICT has a strong potential and societal relevance since it outlines ways to approach imbalances of power in networks of development areas (Henry et al., 2004). As such, the purpose of this research is to advance the global mapping of the SDP field and to enhance our understanding of the relationships of SDP stakeholders from a communication network perspective and to interpret the significance of the stakeholders’ structure for power relations, cohesion and leadership processes in the SDP field.

Mapping the complexity of SDP: assessing the diversity of SDP stakeholders and their interconnections

Using the network perspective to approach the complexity of SDP

The diversity of agencies and their relations creates a great deal of complexity within the SDP field (Coalter, 2007; Giulianotti, 2011a; Lindsey et al., 2017; Straume, 2019; Svensson, 2017). The global SDP sector shares many of the characteristics of a complex system as defined by Cilliers (1998) in that it consists of many different stakeholders – that is, groups/organisations and individuals that affect or are affected by the field – and they implement on-ground projects or in other ways support SDP delivery: community-based organisations and mainstream NGOs, national government departments and intergovernmental agencies, private sector institutions which range from local businesses to transnational corporations, new social movements and radical NGOs, independent individuals (like sports celebrities) and sports clubs (Giulianotti, 2011b; Giulianotti et al., 2016). Among them, formal organisations are the principal stakeholders whose (inter)actions shape SDP policy and practice while NGOs are the core agencies tasked with implementing on-ground projects (Giulianotti, 2011b; Giulianotti et al., 2016; Hayhurst, 2009; Suzuki, 2019). Notably, the complexity of the SDP field increases with the emergence of organisational hybridity, where traditional forms of organising are blended into new creative formations, resulting from the coexistence of multiple institutional logics, organisational identities and forms (Svensson, 2017). The SDP practice deals with a broad range of intervention areas: disability, education, gender, health, livelihoods, peace, social cohesion and infrastructure (Svensson and Woods, 2017: 38–39). Further, SDP stakeholders differ in their core organisational purpose and methodologies, giving priority to the sport or the development component (Coalter, 2007; Lindsey et al., 2017).

In line with the description of complex systems (Cilliers, 1998), the relations among stakeholders do not appear to have any linear characteristic and vary greatly, differing in levels of formality, geographical scope (local, national and transnational) (Lindsey and Bello Bitugu, 2019; Straume, 2019) and areas (information, finance, infrastructure, human resources and strategic planning) (Hambrick et al., 2019). The SDP field does not have established borders and is open to those who would identify themselves with the SDP field (cf. Giulianotti et al., 2016; Kidd, 2008; Lyras and Welty Peachey, 2011; SDP IWG, 2008). SDP agencies interact with the environment, as they are continuously influenced by political and economic structures, science and technology and have a constant flow of material and symbolic resources (Hayhurst et al., 2011; Wilson and Hayhurst, 2009). Lastly, the SDP field is extremely dynamic as it has grown considerably over the last few decades (Darnell et al., 2019).

Previous attempts to map the stakeholders’ structure of the SDP field have depicted limited aspects of the complexity of SDP (Bardocz-Bencsik and Doczi, 2019; Cronin, 2011; Giulianotti, 2011b; Giulianotti et al., 2016; Levermore and Beacom, 2009; Schulenkorf et al., 2016; Straume, 2019; Suzuki, 2019; Svensson and Woods, 2017). Importantly, these studies have failed to take into account the network of relations in which stakeholders are embedded, and therefore the basic structure of the global SDP field remains unclear. Network analysis is a useful approach to deconstructing complex systems so as to observe their architecture (Caldarelli and Catanzaro, 2012; Van Dijk, 2012). According to Caldarelli and Catanzaro, ‘networks provide useful maps to disentangle complex and interwoven systems’ (2012: 41). As such, social network analysis has proved to be a powerful and useful theoretical and methodological perspective to uncover complex social structures where a set of nodes (represented by individuals, groups or other social entities) are connected by a set of relations (Freeman, 2004; Wasserman and Faust, 1999).

Within this context, the relations of SDP networks can be defined by the level of commitment, ranging from partnerships to informal exchange of information, and can be broadly divided into those that focus on material resources and those that deal with symbolic resources (Dobbels et al., 2018; Hambrick et al., 2019; Lindsey and Banda, 2011; Lindsey and Bello Bitugu, 2019). Studies of local SDP networks have shown that relations of information exchange were more numerous than relations of sharing other resources such as finances, infrastructure or human resources (Dobbels et al., 2018; Hambrick et al., 2019). Studies also indicate that the higher density of the information network might be explained by the finding that these relations ‘required least in terms of resources and commitment’ (Hambrick et al., 2019: 720). Also, scholars point to the potential of information networks to serve as a way of achieving relationships with major commitments; for example, financial relations (Hambrick et al., 2019: 720). Considering the scope and significance of symbolic relations, it is possible to suggest that communication networks have considerable potential to serve as a cohesive element at the global level, and therefore they are more appropriate for mapping SDP worldwide than resource networks with higher commitments.

Communication networks

In social networks, ‘communicative inter(actions)’, either mediated or non-mediated (face to face), create links among and between respective agencies (Van Dijk, 2012: 29). Communication possibilities and interconnections in modern societies have been significantly enhanced by media networks, which are defined as ‘systems connecting senders and receivers and filled with symbols and information’ (Van Dijk, 2012: 29). Also, online media networks are distinguished by their speed, geographical reach and interactivity (Van Dijk, 2012). SDP studies acknowledge the potential of the Internet and social media platforms for establishing partnerships and the internationalisation of contacts (Giulianotti, 2019; Hayhurst et al., 2011; Svensson et al., 2015; Wilson and Hayhurst, 2009); however, analyses of SDP media networks have not been conducted.

Media networks ‘are gradually merging with the social networks of face-to-face communication’ in the offline world (Van Dijk, 2012: 272), and they ‘are becoming a single reality’ (Van Dijk, 2012: 20). Online media networks, represented by hyperlinks, are found to be informative about offline characteristics of development NGOs, including social aims and financial, membership and collaborative ties (Pilny and Shumate, 2012). A recent study of an SDP network supports this tendency, revealing that information relations often go together with other relations of non-information resource sharing (Hambrick et al., 2019).

Hyperlinks are a fundamental element, enabling navigation and contacts between individuals or groups in online media networks (Park, 2003). Hypertext, along with convergence, interactivity and digital code is a crucial characteristic of online media that enables their contribution to the formation of the network society (Van Dijk, 2012). Hyperlinks are not a merely technical instrument but are found to be relevant to offline ties and have social significance (De Maeyer, 2013; Park, 2003; Pilny and Shumate, 2012). However, there is no agreement on how to interpret hyperlinks (De Maeyer, 2013), and their social significance has been explained through a variety of concepts, including ‘visibility’, ‘trust’, ‘authority’, ‘credibility’ ‘alliances’ and ‘simple endorsements’ (Pilny and Shumate, 2012: 260).

While hyperlinks may represent quite different phenomena, it is important to study them in context (De Maeyer, 2013). The hyperlinking between agencies organising and delivering development interventions has been recognised as representational communication, which states affiliation but may appear when there is no collaboration between agencies (Pilny and Shumate, 2012; Shumate and Dewitt, 2008; Shumate and Lipp, 2008; Shumate and O’Connor, 2010). Relations of representational communication take place when actors communicate their affiliations to the public or a third party (Shumate and Contractor, 2014; Shumate and O’Connor, 2010; Shumate et al., 2017).

As such, there are three important properties of representational relations, observed by scholars (Shumate and Contractor, 2014; Shumate and Lipp, 2008; Shumate et al., 2017). First, statements about associations – for example, hyperlinks to other agencies – are self-reported. Second, the referenced agency does not necessarily know about being mentioned (linked) by others. Third, ‘name-dropping’ does not incur great costs to those who mention and those who are being mentioned, as could be the case in direct message exchange (Shumate and Contractor, 2014; Shumate and Lipp, 2008; Shumate et al., 2017). These properties of representational relations facilitate informing the public about a variety of association types by organisations and enable an affordable tool to investigate their interconnectedness (Shumate and Contractor, 2014; Shumate et al., 2017). Further, leaders become salient in representational networks as they often depict the actors that stand out from other network members (Shumate and Contractor, 2014).

In the SDP field, communication networks have been conceptualised as ‘information networks’, pointing to ‘flow’ relations (information and knowledge exchange, e.g. correspondence/emails, and attending meetings together) and non-mediated representational relations (knowledge about other members of the coalition) (Dobbels et al., 2018; Hambrick et al., 2019). While the properties of representational communication make it a valuable methodological instrument to map the structure of the SDP field, only few SDP studies have addressed this type of relations. Representational relations (though not named as such) appear in the analysis of the UNOSDP’s actor-network when an annual report of the Office is studied to reveal mentioned agents in the document (Richelieu and Webb, 2019). Another example of this type of relations is the analysis of SDP NGOs’ websites, which briefly highlights the active placement of ‘tabs/links’ to show the relations of sponsorship, supporting and funding (Wilson and Hayhurst, 2009: 168).

SDP structures: power, cohesion and leadership

The extension of ICT and network structures differs in every society (Van Dijk, 2012), which implies unequal opportunities to join networks for SDP stakeholders who are found around the globe: in Africa, Europe, North America, Asia, South America, the Middle East, and Australia and Oceania (Svensson and Woods, 2017: 40). In the SDP field, the relations between different regions are usually seen as unequal, with an influential role for high-income countries of the global North and a dependent position for the global South with lower income (Giulianotti et al., 2016; Hayhurst, 2009; Levermore and Beacom, 2009). From the standpoint of communication, it can be assumed that there is equality in a social network or system when ‘access to and usage of the means of information and communication are available and affordable to all without discrimination’ (Hamelink, 2014: 89). Therefore, network diagnoses can be made according to the degree of participating agents (some have more links than others and are better connected), the centrality of their positions and the advantages of a positioning that generates more and more links (Van Dijk, 2005, 2012). Indeed, many studies confirm that there are significant asymmetries or inequalities in the social systems or networks, which have been described in terms of the concept of the digital divide (Hamelink, 2014; Van Dijk, 2005, 2013b).

The issue of imbalanced communication structures is not just limited to developing technical infrastructures (e.g. computer networks), but also deals with knowledge and skills (Hamelink, 2014; Van Dijk, 2005, 2013a). According to Van Dijk, reducing the gap in access consists of four broad areas: motivation, physical and material access, digital skills and usage (Van Dijk, 2005, 2013a). The uneven distribution of resources in these four areas lacks a profound analysis, while the digital divide is acknowledged as ‘a pertinent threat to the transnational and collaborative character’ for the SDP field, especially in the case of connecting practitioners from the global South and North (Hayhurst et al., 2011: 319). The SDP agencies do not have equal opportunities to use the Internet and differ in the amount of resources and levels of expertise in using media technologies and support online activities (Hayhurst et al., 2011; Svensson et al., 2015; Wilson and Hayhurst, 2009).

In international development, networks as modes of organisation are often seen as ‘a counter-hegemonic force’, enabled to empower marginalised groups because networks are considered to be more horizontal than hierarchies (Henry et al., 2004: 839). This position follows more general optimistic views on new media’s potential to improve communication that have appeared with the proliferation of new ICT and which have been recognised as only partially describing the ambivalent nature of ICT’s potential (Van Dijk, 2012: 3). It is possible to agree that network structures differ from ‘a static and hierarchical organization’ (Van Dijk, 2012: 28) and that they might be conceptualised as ‘heterarchical’ (Kontopoulos, 1993; Van Dijk, 2012). However, power relations, differentiation, centralisation and marginalisation are present in networks and can be discernible through network structure analysis (Van Dijk, 2005, 2012).

Historically, all networks ‘have combined cooperation and competition’ (Van Dijk, 2012: 27). In the SDP field, cooperative and competitive processes coexist (Hambrick et al., 2019; Lindsey and Banda, 2011; Svensson et al., 2018; Welty Peachey et al., 2018). Hambrick et al. point to a ‘prominent trend’ to create ‘regional and international collaborative networks designed to collectively leverage resources, create platforms for knowledge exchanges, and build capacity of member organizations’ (2019: 709). Among prominent SDP networks are the Beyond Sport Network, the International Platform on Sport and Development, the Sport for Social Change networks in Brazil and South Africa, the streetfootballworld network, the SOMOS Sports Network for the Development of Latin America, and the Sport Plus Alliance (former Kicking Aids Out!) (Hambrick et al., 2019: 709; Straume, 2019; Suzuki, 2019; Svensson and Woods, 2017). Out of several online networks, Svensson and Woods have analysed only the organisations ‘involved in SDP grassroots practice’ (2017: 36). Suzuki (2019) has focused on a single international platform, selecting only NGOs for analysis out of a great range of organisations. Unfortunately, it appears that crucial agencies and linkages for SDP practice are not included because delivering SDP agencies (such as SDP NGOs) often do not have the resources or capacity to implement projects alone and therefore they rely on partnerships and networks (Hambrick et al., 2019; Lindsey and Banda, 2011; Lindsey and Bello Bitugu, 2019; Straume, 2019; Svensson et al., 2018; Welty Peachey et al., 2018). Further, these studies have not identified the linkages between varied SDP stakeholders on a large scale, and therefore the density of interconnections of the global SDP field is also not understood. In general, the cohesive level of the SDP field has often been estimated as low (Darnell, 2013; Hayhurst et al., 2011; Kidd, 2008), while there is no evidence describing the extent to which globally dispersed SDP stakeholders make up social and media networks.

The cohesion of the SDP field is further challenged by a series of issues that make the cooperation of SDP stakeholders more difficult: the context of policies of austerity, competition between SDP agencies for resources, misaligned goals, unequal power relations, and implementation issues (Hayhurst and Frisby, 2010; Lindsey and Banda, 2011; Rossi and Jeanes, 2018; Welty Peachey et al., 2018). Competition between indigenous SDP agencies in Zambia has been recognised as a likely factor for the dissolution of a local SDP network (Lindsey and Banda, 2011). Also, this study has shown that bilateral partnerships between SDP and health NGOs were more common than solely between SDP agencies (Lindsey and Banda, 2011). Due to the rivalry for funding, the relations between SDP implementing agencies seem to be more vulnerable than relations between different types of agencies, and it is not clear how far the field has advanced in ‘professional unions’ relations rather than resource dependency relations of donor and recipient.

The UNOSDP was an important leader which was bringing SDP stakeholders together, coordinating the exchange of knowledge in the field and establishing relations among SDP organisations, universities, sports federations, social media, civil society, individuals, governments and the private sector (Richelieu and Webb, 2019). With its closure in 2017, there is a ‘transnational leadership vacuum’ (Giulianotti et al., 2019: 421). Leadership in the field can be undertaken by three kinds of stakeholders, according to the scenarios proposed by Giulianotti et al. (2019: 421–422): transnational agencies (e.g. the International Olympic Committee or Commonwealth Secretariat), networks and multiagency partnerships, and private companies. The nature of these organisations imposes limitations on the extent to which they can serve as a cohesive leader for the diverse SDP stakeholders worldwide (Giulianotti et al., 2019). Therefore, it is important to assess if a new shared leadership appears to unite the agencies of the heterogeneous SDP field.

Method

Social network analysis is a set of methodological tools that focus on the relationships which link actors, thereby describing structure among groups (Freeman, 2004). In this study, these relationships were visualised using Gephi 0.9.2, open-source software for network analysis and visualisation (Bastian et al., 2009). Further, several standard metrics of social network analysis have been computed, with special attention to the concept of centrality (Table 1).

Table 1.

Principal metrics.

Name	Description
Average path length	The arithmetic mean of steps along the shortest paths for all possible pairs of network nodes
Betweenness centrality	The number of times a node falls between any other two nodes on the shortest path between those nodes
Degree centrality	The number of links a node has
Indegree	The number of incoming links
Outdegree	The number of outgoing links
Density	The number of realised ties in the network out of all the possible connections, with a value 1 being an indicator of a completely connected network with 100% of links present
Diameter	The maximum shortest path between any two nodes
Reciprocity	Mutuality in placing links

Sampling and web crawling

The data was obtained using a web crawler ‘Hyphe’ (Jacomy et al., 2016), where it browsed a series of websites in an automated manner from April to June 2019. The study focuses on web resources of collective actors that are formal and informal organisations and associations. Initially, the International Platform on Sport and Development (sportanddev.org) set of organisations (hereafter the Platform) was examined as it is a prominent source of information about the field (cf. Beutler, 2008; Darnell and Black, 2011; Hartmann and Kwauk, 2011; Kidd, 2008). Specifically, a total of 1000 profiles from the Platform database of organisations were indexed, of which 54% were discarded due to the lack of references to web resources; hyperlinks to websites no longer in existence or social media accounts; duplicate entries; or because they were considered not relevant to our research focus. The hyperlinks of the remaining 463 profiles were then analysed so as to identify the starting pages (URLs). Several rules were created to deal with a diversity of web-page types. Finally, after web crawling of 463 web entities at the depth of three clicks from the start pages, more than 46,000 other web entities were discovered. Out of such newly found websites, 57 SDP-relevant organisations with 8 and more incoming links were identified and added to the initial 463, and then crawled. This last step of the data collection effort resulted in a data set of 520 nodes and 2279 edges which connect them.

Classification of stakeholders

The classifications of SDP stakeholders have been elaborated on the basis of the literature review (Table 2). The typology is supplemented by three categories according to the field of the main activities of SDP stakeholders: SDP (the agencies that exist to implement and support activities that combine sport and non-sporting goals), sports (the main activity is sports practice with mastering sporting skills, governing and/or supporting sport) and non-sporting fields (the agencies come from non-sporting fields but have some interest in sport). An inter-coder reliability test of 10% of agencies has measured Krippendorff’s alpha for the classification variables and resulted in .86 (stakeholders according to their relation to SDP) and .91 (the field of main activities), which meets the standard of an acceptable reliability test (Krippendorff, 2013: 325). Additionally, two standards were used in describing the geographical provenance of SDP efforts and the development level of countries: (a) the United Nations ‘Standard Country or Area Codes for Statistical Use’ at the level of regions (e.g. sub-Saharan Africa, Western Europe) (United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), 1999); and (b) the June 2018 World Bank classification of countries by income (low, lower-middle, upper-middle and high-income countries) (World Bank, 2019). The global South is operationalised as low- and middle-income economies located in Africa, Asia, Oceania, Latin America and the Caribbean; and the concept of the global North represents all the other countries (Clarke, 2018).

Table 2.

Typology of sport for development and peace (SDP) stakeholders.

	The primary task (mission)
Core organisational purpose in relation to SDP	Implementation of on-ground projects	Other than the implementation of on-ground projects
SDP is the main activity	SDP implementing agency – the organisations or associations, which the main purpose is the intentional use of sport as a tool to tackle issues of social development and peace-building in on-ground projects	SDP support agency – the agencies with the principle aim to support the field of SDP practice by promoting and developing it (but not to implement on-ground SDP projects)
SDP is not the main activity	Development interventions – the agencies, whose core activity is to address certain development issues by implementing on-ground projects; sport is just one of several tools (mainly development non-profit organisations)	Sports governing bodies – the primary aim is to govern and/or organise a particular sport or several sports (mainly various federations and associations, sports departments of national governments)
	Sports practice – the main aim of an agency is to provide sports practice with the principal aim to develop sporting skills, enhance athletic performance, popularise certain type of sport (however, they have an interest in the use of sport for social good)	Governing and influential organisations – non-sporting agencies that govern, control, organise, and/or influence areas of development and/or peace-building at national or international (global) level (mainly national governing agencies and departments, intergovernmental humanitarian and development organisations, multifaceted development organisations)
		Academic institutions – the purpose of organisations is to teach and/or investigate specifically in sport or various areas, including sport
		Support of sport and development – the agencies that support sports practice and development programs by the provision of services and production of goods (consultancy, management, organisation of tournaments and leagues, production of sporting goods, supporting volunteers)
	Hybrids – the interrelated organisations or associations that share the same or similar brand and represent different types of previously mentioned agencies (they are distinct organisations with a different purpose but are interrelated).

Results

The SDP network’s structural description

The network consists of 520 nodes and 2279 edges where SDP agencies compose the main share of the network (43%). The remaining components of the network represent a variety of stakeholders that are not entirely dedicated to SDP but support it from the sports (23%) and non-sporting fields (34%). Figure 1 results from a force-directed layout and visualises the modular aspect of the diverse field’s structure, where SDP agencies intertwine with other stakeholders and concentrate in the bottom-right part of the graph.

Figure 1.

The network of SDP stakeholders. Node size = degree.

A descriptive analysis of the geography of the organisations defining the network indicates that there are three substantial groups: the largest from Northern America with a representation of 21%, Western Europe with 18% and Northern Europe with 17%. The global North enjoys a dominant position with a 71% share of the SDP network (Table 3).

Table 3.

Geography of sport for development and peace (SDP) stakeholders.

Region	No.	%
Northern America	108	21%
Western Europe	94	18%
Northern Europe	88	17%
Sub-Saharan Africa	78	15%
Southern Asia	36	7%
Latin America and the Caribbean	28	5%
Southern Europe	27	5%
Australia and New Zealand	26	5%
Western Asia	13	3%
Eastern Europe	8	2%
South-eastern Asia	7	1%
Eastern Asia	6	1%
Melanesia	1	0%
TOTAL	520	100%

Regarding the purpose of the organisations’ activities, the largest groups are two practice-oriented stakeholders – SDP implementing agencies (36%) and development interventions (14%). Importantly, these two groups of stakeholders comprise half of all nodes in the network (Table 4). Also, it is relevant to mention the identified hybrid organisations (n = 13). Despite the small representation, they provide valuable results about the ways SDP stakeholders combine different organisational logics. Most often, hybrids take the form of ‘sports practice’ and ‘SDP implementing agency’ as two independent yet associated organisations. Practice-oriented agencies (SDP implementing agencies, development interventions and sports practice) are dominant in the global South subfield (79%) and less represented in the global North (48%).

Table 4.

Distribution of nodes according to the classification categories.

	SDP		Sport		Non-sporting
	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%
SDP implementing agencies	186	36%
SDP support agencies	34	7%
Development interventions					75	14%
Sports practice			34	7%
Sports governing bodies			24	5%
Governing and influential organisations			8	2%	32	6%
Academia					39	8%
Support of sport and development			47	9%	28	5%
Hybrids	2	0%	9	2%	2	0%
TOTAL	222	43%	122	23%	176	34%

The network analysis also reveals three major components: the broad component containing the majority of nodes, which are all connected through paths (n = 350, 67%); the isolated nodes that do not have links to any other members of the network (n = 160, 31%); and four small components with interconnected nodes within a group but disconnected from the central component (n = 10, 2%) (Figure 1). The nodes, disconnected from the broad component (n = 170), are the organisations that were discovered through the Platform but have not had any other connections to the sampled organisations in the larger network. The in-depth analysis of these poorly connected nodes shows no explicit patterns that could account for their isolation in relation to economic and geographic reasons: 74% proceed from high-income and upper-middle-income countries; 58% proceed from the global North. Most of them are highly relevant to the field: 42% are ‘SDP implementing’ or ‘SDP supporting’ agencies, and others have some interest in SDP, like ‘development interventions’ and ‘sports practice’ (31%). Notably, 69% of these disconnected nodes are the practice-oriented agencies: SDP implementing agencies (38%), development interventions (16%) and sports practice (15%).

The density of the network is extremely sparse (0.008), which means that less than 1% of all possible ties are realised (Table 5). It is very low if compared to the subnetwork of ‘governing and influential organisations’ (0.306). However, it is rather efficient from a communicative point of view because the average path length (3.04) is below the diameter (8), and most of the subgroups show efficient proportions of diameter and average path length. The density of the global South subfield is extremely low (0.001) compared to the global North subfield (0.014).

Table 5.

The principal metrics calculated for the network and subnetworks.

Grouping	Metric
Grouping	No. of nodes	No. of edges	Density	Degree	Diameter	Average path length
SDP network	520	2279	0.008	4.383	8	3.04
Large component	350	2273	0.019	6.494	8	3.04
The field of the main activity
SDP	222	249	0.005	1.122	6	3.02
Sports	122	139	0.009	1.139	6	2.75
Non-sporting	176	1150	0.037	6.534	6	2.27
The type of agency in relation to SDP
SDP implementing agencies	186	84	0.002	0.452	5	1.79
SDP support agencies	34	35	0.031	1.029	6	2.17
Development interventions	75	22	0.004	0.293	4	2.14
Sports practice	34	0	0	0.000	0	-
Sports governing bodies	24	45	0.082	1.875	5	2.28
Governing and influential organisations	32	304	0.306	9.500	4	1.55
Academia	47	186	0.086	3.957	6	2.24
Support of sport and development	75	9	0.002	0.120	2	1.25
Hybrids	13	5	0.032	0.385	3	1.5
Global North and global South
Global North	371	1873	0.014	5.049	8	2.93
Global South	149	23	0.001	0.154	3	1.52

The analysis of interlinkages between different types of stakeholders shows that in-group linkages among SDP implementing agencies are less frequent than out-group linkages to governing and influential organisations (Table 6). In general, SDP agencies (implementing, support, hybrids) acknowledge non-sporting and sports agencies more often than each other (Table 7). SDP agencies have about twice as many outbound links to other types of stakeholders (n = 364) than inbound links from others (n = 172).

Table 6.

In-group (in bold) and out-group linkages among sport for development and peace (SDP) stakeholders (n). The numbers in the columns coincide with the group number in rows.

Outbound	Inbound
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
SDP implementing agencies	84	59	28	1	44	108	19	18	20
SDP support agencies	70	35	17	2	24	50	14	15	4
Development interventions	20	20	22	0	15	140	23	10	8
Sports practice	4	4	0	0	2	3	0	2	2
Sports governing bodies	16	8	6	1	45	22	3	5	4
Governing and influential organisations	7	7	44	1	25	304	95	12	8
Academia	18	13	19	1	32	225	186	10	12
Support of sport and development	29	15	14	3	17	62	8	9	9
Hybrids	6	5	5	3	10	39	21	3	5

Table 7.

In-group (in bold) and out-group linkages among stakeholders from different fields.

Outbound	Inbound
		SDP	Non-sporting	Sport
SDP	n = 222	249	248	116
Non-sporting	n = 176	95	1150	86
Sport	n = 122	77	119	139

While SDP implementing agencies extensively refer to governing and influential organisations and sports governing bodies (51% of all their outgoing linkages), the last ones do not reciprocate and have about 6.5 fewer links toward SDP implementing agencies. On the contrary, the degree measure of SDP implementing agencies is substantially increased by SDP support agencies. Supporting agencies refer to implementing agencies more often than to any other stakeholder, including governing organisations, and they are the second most frequently acknowledged group of stakeholders by implementing agencies.

The largest number of interlinkages happens between the agencies headquartered in the global North (Table 8). Being 2.5 times bigger than the global South, the global North stakeholders have produced fewer linkages to the global South than vice versa. Also, there is a significantly larger amount of out-group links from the global South to the global North than in-group links among the global South agencies.

Table 8.

In-group (in bold) and out-group linkages among stakeholders from the global North and global South.

Outbound	Inbound
		Global North	Global South
Global North	n = 371	1873	160
Global South	n = 149	223	23

Individual network measures and leadership

The communicative properties of the field are not evenly distributed, having clear-cut ‘leaders’ and ‘outsiders’ in the connections with others. Almost half of the nodes (49%) are without any incoming links, and another 15% of the organisations have been referenced just once. Similarly, 50% of nodes do not refer to anyone else in the network. The highest indegree is up to 28 times higher than the average, and the highest outdegree – up to 12 times.

As such, the authoritative leaders of the field – that is, those who have many references from others – are mostly non-sporting governing and influential organisations and academic institutions (Table 9). Among the agencies with indegree higher than average 4.32 (5 and more incoming links), 65% represent the non-sporting field. SDP agencies are just a small part of this indegree leaders’ subgroup (17%). The cohesive leaders – that is, those who place many links to others – are similar to authoritative leaders in the way that the subgroup above average 4.38 (with 5 and more out-going links) consists mostly of non-sporting agencies. The measurement of betweenness centrality shows that there are few stakeholders (mainly non-sporting) that serve as ‘bridges’ (28%), being on the shortest path between at least two other agencies, what underlines a large amount of ‘outsiders’ that do not have such communicative characteristic.

Table 9.

Top 20 of sport for development and peace (SDP) stakeholders and top 10 of SDP agencies according to indegree and outdegree centrality. In italics – ‘hybrids’. In bold – SDP agencies.

No.	No. of SDP agency	Stakeholder	Indegree	No.	No. of SDP agency	Stakeholder	Outdegree
1		UN.org & departments	122	1		UN.org & departments	54
2		ec.Europa.eu	78	2	1	Streetfootballworld.org	54
3		Gov.uk	65	3		Uct.ac.za & shawco.org	47
4		Who.int	62	4		Worldbank.org	44
5		Unesco.org	61	5		Idan.dk	44
6		Europa.eu	53	6		Weforum.org	42
7	1	Sad.ch & sportanddev.org	52	7		Unesco.org	40
8		Fifa.com	48	8		100Yearlegacy.org	36
9		Olympic.org	45	9		Usembassy.gov	35
10		Worldbank.org	44	10	2	Icsspe.org	35
11		Coe.int	37	11		Ilo.org	34
12		Uefa.com & uefafoundation.org	36	12		Olympic.org	33
13		Ilo.org	33	13	3	Peace-Sport.org	33
14	2	Streetfootballworld.org	32	14	4	Womenwin.org	33
15		Admin.ch	31	15		Uni-Freiburg.de	32
16		Usaid.gov	30	16		Bmz.de	31
17		State.gov	30	17		Washington.edu	30
18		Ox.ac.uk	28	18		Ox.ac.uk	29
19		Weforum.org	26	19		Uq.edu.au	29
20	3	Beyondsport.org	26	20		Northeastern.edu	29
49	4	Laureus.com	15	30	5	Sport4development.ie	24
50	5	Peace-Sport.org	14	35	6	Tafisa.org	22
58	6	Icsspe.org	12	38	7	Beyondsport.org	20
63	7	Coachesacrosscontinents.org	12	44	8	Playsoccer-Nonprofit.org	18
70	8	Farenet.org	11	47	9	Isca-Web.org	17
71	9	Homelessworldcup.org	11	48	10	Football-Alliance.org	17
72	10	Oneworldplayproject.com	11

The UN and its departments are the leaders in each metric. Streetfootballworld shows a remarkable high ranking as the second in outdegree and betweenness centrality measures, which characterises it as an outstanding SDP cohesive leader. Representatives of the global North dominate in all leadership subgroups (ranging from 83.5 to 93%). Also, the 11 most referenced agencies in the subnetwork of SDP agencies are from the global North, according to indegree calculated for this type of stakeholders (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Leadership among SDP agencies. Node size = indegree, calculated for the SDP subnetwork. 1. Sad.ch & sportanddev.org (29). 2. Streetfootballworld.org (21). 3. Beyondsport.org (18). 4. Peace-Sport.org (9). 5. Homelessworldcup.org (8). 6. Oneworldplayproject.com (8). 7. Isca-Web.org (7). 8. Womenwin.org (7).

Discussion

The results of this study provide a detailed view of the complexity of the worldwide SDP network. In particular, the network consists of a great variety of organisations and associations, with an ample presence of agencies dedicated to on-ground projects delivery. SDP implementing agencies get interconnected with governing bodies, influential international organisations and other agencies that support SDP efforts from both sports and non-sporting fields. The diversity of the network supports the conceptualisation of SDP as a field of multiple organisational forms and institutional logics.

Confirming the results from previous studies, the SDP network appears to be a highly complex transnational phenomenon (Giulianotti, 2011a, 2019; Giulianotti et al., 2016), and the linkages knit together stakeholders from different regions of the world. The strongest roots are in Northern America, Northern Europe and Western Europe, where most agencies are headquartered (regardless of on-ground projects location). Moreover, there is a well-articulated preference of global North stakeholders to link with each other rather than with representatives of the global South. This finding presents evidence to support the homophily theory, which posits that links between similar agencies occur more often than between dissimilar ones (Shumate et al., 2017: 6). On the contrary, stakeholders from the global South extensively refer to the global North, and these links substantially outweigh in-group connections. Hence, these results endorse the notion that SDP is a largely northern-driven field (Black, 2010; Hayhurst and Frisby, 2010; Levermore, 2009).

Among SDP stakeholders, there are well-distinguished leaders and outsiders in the number of links and cohesive characteristics. The ‘authorities’ – that is, organisations acknowledged by many others – play a symbolic role in the network, providing common identification for other agencies and serving as an element of legitimacy building (cf. Shumate and Contractor, 2014). The role of ‘authorities’ is largely taken by non-sporting governing and influential organisations as well as academic institutions. Importantly, SDP implementing agencies refer mostly to non-sporting governing and influential organisations but very few have their links reciprocated. This can be interpreted as a limited role of such leaders in promoting SDP agencies and creating connective public goods in SDP (cf. Shumate and Dewitt, 2008; Shumate and Lipp, 2008).

In general, SDP agencies are not the ‘authorities’ that receive many references from other types of stakeholders. Rather, they are connecting elements that place links to others more often than they receive. Other connecting leaders appear to be ‘bridges’ where they function as agents which connect the various stakeholders within the sparse and fragmented field. The most outstanding ‘bridges’ in the field originate from different fields: non-sporting (the UN and its departments), SDP (Streetfootballworld.org) and sports (the International Olympic Committee). These results reflect the position of SDP practice at the intersection of sports and non-sporting fields.

In every aspect of leadership, the key role of the United Nations and its departments is evidenced once more (cf. Beutler, 2008); thus, it is still a crucial player in the SDP field even after the closure of the UNOSDP. Among SDP agencies, such actors as Sad.ch & sportanddev.org, Streetfootballworld.org, Beyondsport.org and Peace-Sport.org stand out in leadership. These organisations reveal the potential for shared leadership formation, especially in the framework of ‘diverse multiagency partnerships and networks’ (Giulianotti et al., 2019: 422). The geographical origins of leaders in the field support the general leading role of the global North in SDP efforts.

There are many poorly connected organisations. This finding suggests that not all agencies identify themselves with the discovered transnational field, or that they are indigenous initiatives, with limited international input (cf. Lindsey and Grattan, 2012). The lack of strong identification with the larger network should not be regarded as an opposite characteristic to the northern-led cohesion, but rather as a complementary one that shows two facets of SDP (cf. Darnell and Hayhurst, 2012; Levermore and Beacom, 2012). The high number of weakly connected agencies supports the description of the SDP field as a highly fragmented one (Giulianotti, 2019: 29).

Findings also indicate difficulties in establishing relations between delivery organisations, which can be attributed to a competitive context and shortage of resources (Darnell and Black, 2011; Hayhurst et al., 2011; Kidd, 2008; Lindsey and Banda, 2011; Wilson and Hayhurst, 2009). In particular, SDP implementing agencies are loosely knit, having more links to other types of organisations (mainly to governing and influential organisations) than among themselves. Also, the global South subfield, dominated by practice-oriented agencies, has lower cohesion than the global North subfield. Bearing in mind that the global South has shown the capacity to refer to global North organisations, this fact cannot be attributed exclusively to the digital gap. Besides, it is relevant to underline that the group of agencies, disconnected from the larger network, mainly consists of the practice-oriented agencies.

The presence of salient leaders, significantly outstanding by the number of incoming links, is a common feature of representational communication networks (Shumate and Contractor, 2014: 461), while low scores do not have such an explanation and should be attributed primarily to the characteristics of the field, including the already mentioned rivalry and resource-dependency. The formation of central and peripheral positions in the SDP network should have substantial analysis because the regularity of power distribution in networks predicts the increase in already existing differences in media networks (Van Dijk, 2005, 2012). The power ‘law’ urges that ‘the best connected and most central actors or hubs’ in networks will continuously attract links (Van Dijk, 2005: 150). This regularity of networks might create an adverse situation if ‘mainstream SDP will be dominated by the same cluster of stakeholders with a set outlook and culture’ (Giulianotti, 2019: 33; emphasis in original). A strategy to increase participation in the SDP online network could be to connect more organisations to the Platform, or similar networks, to the extent that other agencies feel pressure to join the networks. Networks are noticed to have effects on agencies external to networks, when ‘(t)he more people participate in a network, the more others are likely to join’ (Van Dijk, 2012: 38). To get weight in networks, weakly connected agencies should be able to make contributions to the SDP network; otherwise, they will be ‘under continuous threat of being removed or marginalized’ (Van Dijk, 2005: 149).

The institution of intermediaries – that is, ‘central meeting places’ that bridge clusters – should be supported because they perform an important cohesive role, and their significance will only increase with the network growth, as largely happens in media networks that evidence the extreme importance of search engines, portals, social media sites and other web platforms (Van Dijk, 2012: 39). To support communication equality, some of those intermediaries could be encouraged to become based in the global South. This recommendation is consistent with Giulianotti et al. who argued that ‘(i)t may be beneficial for donors to enable the hubs of these partnerships or networks to be established in the global South, in part to disrupt the long-standing cycle of aid . . . which continues to place the global North at the center’ (2019: 422). Also, universities in the global South could consider the creation of cohesive hubs within their research agenda on the SDP field. The University of Cape Town (South Africa) has an outstanding position in the SDP network for the number of outgoing links to other stakeholders. This idea underlines the general importance of educational institutions in supporting the growth of SDP (Huffman et al., 2019).

Limitations and future research

The perspective of representational communication and social network analysis has shown fruitful results in mapping the complexity of SDP. The SDP network provides meaningful insights into its cohesion patterns and the nature of its leadership. However, the study has several limitations. The reliance on Sportanddev.org as a principal source of stakeholders limits the depth and breadth for identifying agencies and relations within the field. While the Platform is intended to bring together global efforts, for reasons that deserve further analysis, it appears that it connects mainly the organisations from the global North. Future research should seek to add networks such as those created by Streetfootballworld.org, Beyondsport.org, Laureus.com and Womenwin.org. This research has been able to propose a taxonomy which allows generating a classification of organisations related to the SDP domain. Future research should contrast its validity and its degree of congruence with the existing hypotheses.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research has been supported by the University of Deusto Research Training Grants Programme.

ORCID iDs

Volha Herasimovich

Aurkene Alzua-Sorzabal

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