Context is key.

Modern social network analysis — the analysis of relational data arising from social systems — is a computationally intensive area of research. Here, we provide an overview of a software package which provides support for a range of network analytic functionality within the R statistical computing environment. General categories of currently supported functionality are described, and brief examples of package syntax and usage are shown.

Although the focus of the package 

has been on social scientific applications, many of the included tools may also be useful for 

via Journal of Statistical Software