Compare methods

	Brokerage Analysis	Core-Periphery Analysis
Field	Sociology	Sociology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1989	2000
Originator	Roger Gould & Roberto Fernandez	Stephen Borgatti & Martin Everett
Type	Classification of intermediary positions in a network	Network partition into a dense core and a sparse periphery
Seminal source	Gould, R. V., & Fernandez, R. M. (1989). Structures of mediation: A formal approach to brokerage in transaction networks. Sociological Methodology, 19, 89–126.	Borgatti, S. P., & Everett, M. G. (2000). Models of core/periphery structures. Social Networks, 21(4), 375–395.
Aliases	Gould-Fernandez brokerage, brokerage roles, brokerage typology, structures of mediation	core/periphery model, Borgatti-Everett core-periphery, core-periphery structure detection, coreness analysis
Related	5	5
Summary	Gould-Fernandez brokerage analysis classifies the intermediary positions actors occupy in a network. For every two-path in which an actor v sits between a source i and a target j, the analysis labels v's role according to the group memberships of the three actors, yielding five distinct brokerage types — coordinator, itinerant broker (consultant), gatekeeper, representative, and liaison. Counting how often each actor plays each role reveals who mediates within groups, who controls access across group boundaries, and who bridges otherwise separate communities.	Core/periphery analysis partitions a network into a densely interconnected core of actors and a sparse periphery whose members connect to the core but not to one another. Formalized by Borgatti and Everett, the method fits the observed adjacency matrix to an idealized block pattern — a fully connected core block, an empty periphery block, and core–periphery blocks of intermediate density — to test whether and how strongly a network exhibits this canonical mesoscale structure.