Workshop - Social Media Network Analysis

Introduction to Social Media Network Analysis with NodeXL

Benefits:
This workshop provides an overview of Social Network Analysis (SNA) and its application to social media. 

The network or directed graph is a common structure in a wide range of different kinds of social media. 

Upon completion of this workshop, participants will:

* be able to understand the basics of SNA, its terminology and background.
* be able to transform communication data (e.g. Twitter, email, flickr, message boards etc.) into network data.
* understand the different possible presentations of social networks, e.g. in a matrix or a sociogram.
* apply network metrics and visualizations to find clusters and key contributors in real world social media data sets.
* get familiar with the use of standard SNA tools and software in general and the NodeXL social network analysis add-in for Excel in particular.
* be able to derive practical and useful information through SNA analysis that would help design an innovative and successful online community.

Intended audience:

Community management, social media monitoring and marketing, knowledge management, collaboration and human resources, legal discovery, organizational behavior and management

Presentation style:
In addition to the presentation of lecture material, students who bring a Windows laptop with Office 2007 will be able to work along with lab exercises and discussions.

SNA is a flexible method that can be applied in different ways, the course will devote time to the application of SNA for for the business goals of the workshop participants.

Instructor's Background:

Dr. Marc A. Smith is a sociologist and Chief Social Scientist at Connected Action Consulting Group a provider of fine quality social media analysis platforms and systems.  Smith specializes in the social organization of online communities and computer mediated interaction. He founded and managed the Community Technologies Group at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington and is now leading the development of social media reporting and analysis tools for Connected Action Consulting Group.  Smith lives and works in Silicon Valley, California.  Smith is the co-editor with Peter Kollock of Communities in Cyberspace (Routledge), a collection of essays exploring the ways identity; interaction and social order develop in online groups. He has published several dozen papers about the empirical study of online collective behavior (for related papers see: http://delicious.com/marc_smith/Paper). Smith's goal is to visualize these social cyberspaces, mapping and measuring their structure, dynamics and life cycles. Smith is applying this work to the development of a generalized community analysis platform, providing a web based system for groups of all sizes to discuss and publish their material to the web and analyze the emergent trends that result.  Smith received a B.S. in International Area Studies from Drexel University in Philadelphia in 1988, an M.Phil. in social theory from Cambridge University in 1990, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from UCLA in 2001. He is an affiliate faculty at the Department of Sociology at the University of Washington and the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland.

Detailed Overview.

Justification:
The Internet is being shifted from an information pool to a more social environment.  For many stakeholders, there is a growing need for insight into social media activity, whether inside or outside the enterprise. 

Network diagrams illustrate several of the key concepts in social network analysis: the node and edge.  Nodes are typically dots or symbols that represent the people, documents, groups or entities in the population being studies.  The lines are edges, representing the connection between two nodes.

Figure 1: An example of an SNA sociogram

Figure 2: A characteristic SNA centrality diagram

The workshop will focus on a series of exercises that will introduce the ideas of network analysis from a "bottom-up" perspective, starting with the most simplified networks possible and then moving to more complex and naturally occuring data sets.

Participants will be able to analyze data they bring to the workshop.

Duration of the Course:
The total duration of the course will be 6 hours with a break for lunch.

Content and schedule:
The workshop will be structured to encourage activities within small groups to maximize the interaction among participants. In the first part, participants will be exposed to the introduction of SNA and get familiar with the terminology and definitions of key terms and concepts in SNA. In addition to the presentation of lecture material, small informal exercises and discussion will be held in order to encourage interaction. Theoretical content will include:

• Introduction into the components and characteristics of social networks
• Information about relational data that is used for SNA along with the different ways that the data can be presented
• Presentation of the different measurements of network characteristics within SNA
• Discussion of different approaches towards SNA

The practical hands-on part will address the application of SNA to a number of social media data sets including personal email, message boards, twitter, flickr, and facebook. Through a series of interactive exercises, a number of case studies will be demonstrated and discussed. Ways of using SNA to study new forms of CMC such as MMORPGs, Wikis, blogs etc. will also be discussed. 

This practical part will include:

• Demonstration and discussion of popular SNA tools including the free and open NodeXL

• Major forms of data analysis with SNA: cliques, key contributors
• The application of SNA in large hyperlink data analysis
• SNA as a method to study different collaboration and social media settings
• SNA in combination with other research methods

As social networks proliferate a need is growing for tools to manage, analyze, and visualize network graphs.  NodeXL is an add-in for Office 2007 that provides social network diagram and analysis tools in the context of a spreadsheet application. Adding the directed graph chart type to Excel opens up many possibilities for easily manipulating networks and controlling their display properties. In this workshop the steps needed to install and productively operate NodeXL for Office 2007 are reviewed. The free and open NodeXL add-in provides directed graph charting features within Excel, allowing users to create node-link diagrams with control over each node and edge color, size, transparency and shape without requiring the use of a command line interface or programming language. Since NodeXL builds within Excel, all of the controls and programmatic features of Office are available. Additional features of NodeXL generate social networks from social media data sources like personal e-mail (drawing data from the Windows Desktop Search engine) and the Twitter social network micro-blogging system. Arbitrary edge lists (anything that can be pasted into Excel) can be visualized and analyzed in NodeXL. This session will provide a walk through the basic operation of NodeXL. Attendees are encouraged to bring an edge list of interest. Sample data sets from enterprise social media networks will be provided. To download the NodeXL Add-in and slides, go to: http://www.codeplex.com/NodeXL.

Slides are available at: http://www.slideshare.net/Marc_A_Smith/2009-node-xl-social-media-network-visualization-tools-for-excel-2007

The NodeXL Tutorial by Derek Hansen, Ben Shneiderman, and Marc Smith introduces some of the core functionality of NodeXL using a few simple datasets.

Additional exercises will take place to encourage the participants to think about the application of SNA in their work or research area. As SNA is a flexible method that can be applied in different ways, the workshop will emphasize the different possibilities and application areas of this method.

Background of attendees:
As the tutorial will be introductory, no background knowledge about Social Network Analysis or statistics is required.