Connected Action

Sociology and the Internet, Social Media, Networks and Mobile Social Software

May 20-24, 2013 – CTS – Second International Symposium on Collaboration, Social Computing, New Media and Networks (SoMNet 2013) in San Diego

March 6th, 2013 by Marc Smith · 3 Comments

2013-CTS-SoMNet-San Diego-Logo

Second International Symposium
on
Collaboration, Social Computing,
New Media & Networks
(SoMNet 2013)
part of the
2013 International Conference on
Collaboration Technologies and Systems
(CTS 2013

May 20-24, 2013
The Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina San Diego, California, USA
In Cooperation with ACM, IEEE, and IFIP
The Second  International Symposium on Collaboration, Social  Computing, New Media, and Networks (SoMNet 2013) will be held as part of the 2013 International Conference on Collaboration Technologies and Systems (http://cts2013.cisedu.info/) May 20-24, 2013 in San Diego, California, USA.  The Symposium will address, explore and exchange information on the state-of-the-art and practice in the broad multi-disciplinary field of social computing and new media.  Participation is invited from researchers, designers, educators and interested parties in all disciplines and specialties (computer science, linguistics, psychology, statistics, sociology, multimedia and semantic web technologies).
  • On May 20, there will be a day long hands-on tutorial on using NodeXL to perform social media network analysis.
  • On May 21, there will be a symposium with invited speakers presenting research and methods for understanding social media.

→ 3 CommentsTags: 2013 · Conference · CTS · Measuring social media · NodeXL · Social network · Social Network Analysis · Talks

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Contrasting Twitter social media network maps of auto brands with NodeXL

May 17th, 2013 by Marc Smith · 3 Comments

People talk about their cars a lot in Twitter!  These are typical “brand” network structures with many isolates and a few dense clusters.

#acura Twitter NodeXL SNA Map and Report for Friday, 17 May 2013 at 21:23 UTC

#acura
   #ford Twitter NodeXL SNA Map and Report for Friday, 17 May 2013 at 21:02 UTC

   #ford
#bmw Twitter NodeXL SNA Map and Report for Friday, 17 May 2013 at 21:09 UTC

#bmw
   #subaru Twitter NodeXL SNA Map and Report for Friday, 17 May 2013 at 21:05 UTC

   #subaru
#honda Twitter NodeXL SNA Map and Report for Friday, 17 May 2013 at 21:09 UTC

#honda
   #toyota Twitter NodeXL SNA Map and Report for Friday, 17 May 2013 at 21:02 UTC

   #toyota
#tesla Twitter NodeXL SNA Map and Report for Friday, 17 May 2013 at 21:04 UTC

#tesla
   #hyundai Twitter NodeXL SNA Map and Report for Friday, 17 May 2013 at 21:03 UTC

   #hyundai

 

 

→ 3 CommentsTags: 2013 · Data Mining · Industry · Measuring social media · NodeXL · Research · Social Media · Social network · Social Network Analysis · Visualization

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NodeXL page in Wikipedia

May 14th, 2013 by Marc Smith · No Comments

The NodeXL project is pleased to have a Wikipedia page!

20130514-Wikipedia-NodeXL-Page top

Please edit the page and help improve it as a useful guide to using the NodeXL social media network analysis and visualization application.

→ No CommentsTags: 2013 · Foundation · Measuring social media · Social Media · Social Media Research Foundation · Social network · Social Network Analysis · Sociology · Visualization

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Dr. Cody Dunne speaks about Network Motif Simplification at the recent CHI 2013 conference in Paris, France

May 6th, 2013 by Marc Smith · 5 Comments

Here is Dr. Cody Dunne speaking about a new information visualization technique called “Network Motif Simplification” at the recent CHI 2013 conference in Paris, France.

Cody Dunne presents Network Motif Simplification at CHI 2013 Photo Credit: Ben ShneidermanDr. Cody Dunne at CHI 2013 (Photo Credit: Ben Shneiderman)

Networks, no matter how complex, are composed of simpler, smaller structures, called motifs.  Some of these structures are easy to identify, like the pattern of a “star” where a single node acts as the sole connection to a connected component for one or more “pendant” nodes with a single tie.  Another common pattern are nodes that are “parallel bridges” which share the only two connections they have with two or more other nodes.  These common structures  can be identified and removed and replaced with more efficient and comprehensible representations.

His paper with Prof. Ben Shneiderman at CHI 2013, “Motif simplification: improving network visualization readability with fan, connector, and clique glyphs, demonstrates a novel method for improving the quality of network visualizations.  Common network motifs appear frequently in networks.  In network motif simplification these patterns are removed and replaced with simpler composite images:


Motifs collapse into simple glyphs

The result is a simplification of the network visualization, removing clutter to reveal the core structural properties of interest.

2013-NodeXL-Analysis-Groups-By Motif exampleA complex network of voting relationships in the
2007 United State Senate is reduced to a simplified form

This method for collapsing complex network graphs into simpler forms has been implemented in NodeXL.  Look for the feature in the NodeXL Ribbon menu, in the NodeXL > Analysis > Groups > Group by Motif… option.

2013-NodeXL-Analysis-Groups-By Motif
NodeXL implements network motif simplification

The feature allows users to select the types of motifs that should be recognized and collapsed:

2013-NodeXL-Analysis-Groups-By Motif Dialog
Users select network motifs to find and replace

The paper has been reviewed by Stephen Few on the Perceptual Edge Visual Business Intelligence blog.

Here is Dr. Dunne’s video explaining and demonstrating the concept:

For more information about the project, see: http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/nicernetvis

→ 5 CommentsTags: 2013 · CHI · Conference · Foundation · Maryland · Network visualization layouts · NodeXL · Research · Social Media Research Foundation · Social network · University · Visualization

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Mapping social media networks of news media outlets in Twitter with NodeXL

May 4th, 2013 by Marc Smith · 4 Comments

Here are recent graphs of Twitter networks for several news media outlets :
@cnn Twitter NodeXL SNA Map and Report for  Saturday, 04 May 2013 at 17:44 UTC

@cnn
bbcworld Twitter NodeXL SNA Map and Report for Saturday, 04 May 2013 at 17:53 UTC

bbcworld
@washingtonpost Twitter NodeXL SNA Map and Report for Saturday, 04 May 2013 at 17:44 UTC

@washingtonpost
theeconomist Twitter NodeXL SNA Map and Report for  Saturday, 04 May 2013 at 17:47 UTC

theeconomist
@latimes Twitter NodeXL SNA Map and Report for Saturday, 04 May 2013 at 17:43 UTC

@latimes
@FT OR @financialtimes Twitter NodeXL SNA Map and Report for Saturday, 04 May 2013 at 17:44 UTC

@FT OR @financialtimes
@nytimes Twitter NodeXL SNA Map and Report for Saturday, 04 May 2013 at 17:36 UTC

@nytimes
cbcnews Twitter NodeXL SNA Map and Report for Saturday, 04 May 2013 at 17:35 UTC

cbcnews
@newshour Twitter NodeXL SNA Map and Report for Saturday, 04 May 2013 at 17:20 UTC

@newshour
nbcnews Twitter NodeXL SNA Map and Report for Saturday, 04 May 2013 at 17:16 UTC

nbcnews
bbcnews Twitter NodeXL SNA Map and Report for Saturday, 04 May 2013 at 17:13 UTC

bbcnews
cbsnews Twitter NodeXL SNA Map and Report for Saturday, 04 May 2013 at 17:01 UTC

cbsnews

The common “broadcast” structure is common to most of these news media outlets, it appears as a “hub and spoke” pattern.  The people at the end of these spokes are the “audience”.  Some of these news networks have many more “isolates” or “brand” mentioners – these are the grids of individuals with no connections to others.  In contrast some contributors are densely connected in communities of discussion formed around various topics.

→ 4 CommentsTags: Measuring social media · Metrics · NodeXL · Research · SNA · Social Media · Social Media Research Foundation · Social network · Social Network Analysis · Visualization

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New NodeXL Slides – overview of network analysis for social media

March 20th, 2013 by Marc Smith · 10 Comments

Newly updated slides are now available that provide an overview of the NodeXL project from the Social Media Research Foundation:

2013 NodeXL Social Media Network Analysis from Marc Smith

Updates to NodeXL are on the way to expand the variety of data importers, improve web publication, and scale to large data sets.

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Upcoming talks: NodeXL and Social Media in San Francisco, Indiana, Chicago, San Diego and Kentucky

March 8th, 2013 by Marc Smith · 3 Comments

Here is a round up of the social media network analysis talks, workshops, and training events I will be doing in the coming months:

 University of Kentucky, LINKS Logo - SNA June 3-7, 2013
Social Media Network Analysis Workshop at LINKS2013
University of Kentucky
 
2013-CTS-SoMNet-San Diego-Logo

May 20-24, 2013
International Symposium on Collaboration, Social Computing, New Media & Networks (SoMNet)
San Diego, CA.

 

2013-PAWCON Logo

April 15th, 2013
Predictive Analytics WorldMapping Social Media to Predict Influence and Measure Propagation
San Francisco, CA.

 

2013-PASSBAC Square April 12, 2013
PASS Business Analytics Conference: Mapping social media with NodeXL
Chicago, IL.
2013 Purdue Logo 215x80 April 8 and 9, 2013
NSF workshop: Kredible.Net  – Study reputation and social roles on social mediaPurdue University
2013-OCTribe-Logo March 26, 2013
OCTribe – San Francisco Online Community Meetup – Mapping Social Media with NodeXL
San Francisco, CA

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March 26, 2013 – OCTribe – San Francisco Online Community Meetup – Mapping Social Media with NodeXL

March 7th, 2013 by Marc Smith · 7 Comments

2013-Twitter-OCTribe-NodeXL-SNA-Map

OCTribe Meetup

http://Meetup.com/octribe 

Tuesday, March 26, 2013 7:00 PM

TechSoup Headquarters 
525 Brannan Street, San Francisco, CA

SF Online Community MeetUp is the free monthly gathering of online community managers, enthusiasts, and innovators to meet and discuss tools and strategies for building and managing effective communities.

During our March 26 Meetup we’re happy to welcome Marc A. Smith, Chief Social Scientist at Connected Action Consulting Group for his talk, “Charting Collections of Connections in Social Media: Creating Maps and Measures with NodeXL.” The talk will explore how the Social Media Research Foundation, an organization formed to develop open tools and data sets and to foster scholarship related to social media, is using NodeXL to create social network maps. Learn how you can use this free and open tool to map public social media conversations happening among your online community across social networks. Find out how NodeXL can augment your existing community management practices to identify key influencers in your community, discover relationships and strategic hashtags, and more.

→ 7 CommentsTags: 2013 · Foundation · Measuring social media · Metrics · Network metrics and measures · Network visualization layouts · NodeXL · Presentation · Research · SMRF · SNA · Social Interaction · Social Media · Social Media Research Foundation · Social network · Social Network Analysis · Social Theories and concepts · Sociology · Talks · Training · Visualization · Workshop

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June 7, 2013: Social Media Network Analysis Workshop at LINKS2013 at the University of Kentucky

March 6th, 2013 by Marc Smith · 1 Comment

University of Kentucky, LINKS Logo - SNA

I am delighted to be attending and presenting a workshop on social media network analysis at the University of Kentucky’s LINKS 2013 program on June 7th, 2013.

This week long program has for many years provided intensive training in network methods, research, and tools.

I am excited to attend some of the program and meet researchers and students working on networks of all sorts.  I will do a short hands-on talk about NodeXL and a longer day devoted to the broader ways networks are useful for the study of social media.

[Read more →]

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April 15, 16, 2013: Predictive Analytics World: Mapping Social Media – Talk and Workshop

March 6th, 2013 by Marc Smith · 3 Comments

2013-PAWCON Logo

I will give a talk and run a hands-on workshop at the upcoming Predictive Analytics World conference in San Francisco, April 15 and 16, 2013.

Talk: Monday, April 15, at 10:50-11:35AM

Track 1: Social Data - Mapping Social Media to Predict Influence and Measure Propagation

Hidden within social media streams are structures that identify the most influential voices on any topic. Social network analysis and visualization can take millions of messages and reveal the shape of the crowd and the people at the center of it. Using the free and open NodeXL application, this talk demonstrates the tools and methods needed to create detailed maps of any social media topic. Learn to map and analyze social networks extracted from email, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, message boards, and the WWW. No coding or prior experience needed!

Workshop: Tuesday, April 16, 2013  From: 6:30pm – 9:30pm

Mapping Groups of People and What They are Talking About in Social Media

Intended Audience: Social media managers and analysts, marketers, collaboration and enterprise IT, advertisers, event planners, journalists,

Knowledge Level: all skill levels, beginners particularly welcome. Should have an interest in social media. Any experience with a spreadsheet is a plus!

Workshop Description

Social media conversations are clumpy. People tend to follow and reply to people who share their views so distinct clusters emerge in many social media discussions. Often these sub-groups have distinct ways of using language, point to different URLs, and mention different hashtags, even when talking about the same topic. Simple, free and open tools can now collect and analyze these clusters of discussion, highlighting the contrasting themes in the conversation. Learn how to perform key tasks like:

[Read more →]

→ 3 CommentsTags: Companies · Conference · Connected Action · Foundation · Industry · NodeXL · PAWCON: Predictive Analytics World · SNA · Social Media · Social network · Social Network Analysis · Visualization · Workshop

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April 12, 2013 PASS Business Analytics Conference: Mapping social media with NodeXL

March 6th, 2013 by Marc Smith · 1 Comment

 

 2013-PASSBAC Square   I will speak at the 2013 PASS Business Analytics Conference in Chicago on April 12, 2013.  The event focuses on data discovery, data exploration and visualization, predictive analytics, content management and architecture, collaboration, information strategies, and more.  I will speak about social media Data Analytics and Visualization in a presentation titled: Charting Collections of Social Media Connections with NodeXL
 network of 106 Twitter users whose recent tweets contained
This is a sample NodeXL graph that represents a network of 106 Twitter users whose recent tweets contained “passbac”. The network was obtained on Wednesday, 30 January 2013 at 01:09 UTC. There is an edge for each follows relationship. There is an edge for each “replies-to” relationship in a tweet. There is an edge for each “mentions” relationship in a tweet. There is a self-loop edge for each tweet that is not a “replies-to” or “mentions”. The tweets were made over the 7-day, 5-hour, 32-minute period from Tuesday, 22 January 2013 at 17:40 UTC to Tuesday, 29 January 2013 at 23:12 UTC.

 Learn to make your own network maps of social media at PASSBAC 2013!

2013-passbac_web_banner

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April 8 and 9, 2013 – NSF workshop: Kredible.Net at Purdue University – Study reputation and social roles on social media

March 6th, 2013 by Marc Smith · 3 Comments

2013 Purdue Logo 215x802013 KredibleNet Logo

This April 8 and 9, 2013 an NSF funded workshop called Kredible.Net to be held at Purdue University will bring together researchers studying  reputation and social roles in social media.

The grant will help researchers investigate how social media, especially Wikipedia articles and editors, shape public knowledge. The project aims to build a research community and to propose a research agenda for the study of reputation and authority in informal knowledge markets, such as Wikipedia.

The team is lead by Sorin Adam Matei (PI) of Brian Lamb School of Communication, Elisa Bertino (Cyber Center), Michael Zhu and Chuanhai Liu (Department of Statistics) , and Luo Si (Department of Computer Science).

The KredibleNet project is supported by an international team of researchers including Marc Smith, director of the Social Media Research Foundation and the NodeXL project and by Dr. Luca De Alfaro, from University of California, Santa Cruz, the head of the WikiTrust project. The team also includes researchers Jure Leskovec (Stanford), Bernie Hogan (Oxford Internet Institute), and Ben Shneiderman (University of Maryland).

The KredibleNet grant will fund research and workshops that will reveal how social media leaders gain authority to shape public knowledge.

See: http://kredible.net/in/kredible-net-awarded-nsf-grant-to-study-reputation-and-social-roles-on-social-media/

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Journal Paper: JCMC – Birds of a feather tweet together: Integrating Network and Content Analyses to Examine Cross-Ideology Exposure on Twitter

March 3rd, 2013 by Marc Smith · 19 Comments


2013-JCMC Logo

Itai Himelboim, Stephen McCreery and I have recently published a paper in the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication.

2013-JCMC Cover Birds of a feather tweet together: Integrating Network and Content Analyses to Examine Cross-Ideology Exposure on Twitter

Abstract

This study integrates network and content analyses to examine exposure to cross-ideological political views on Twitter. We mapped the Twitter networks of 10 controversial political topics, discovered clusters – subgroups of highly self-connected users – and coded messages and links in them for political orientation. We found that Twitter users are unlikely to be exposed to cross-ideological content from the clusters of users they followed, as these were usually politically homogeneous. Links pointed at grassroots web pages (e.g.: blogs) more frequently than traditional media websites. Liberal messages, however, were more likely to link to traditional media. Last, we found that more specific topics of controversy had both conservative and liberal clusters, while in broader topics, dominant clusters reflected conservative sentiment.

View Full Article (HTML) Get PDF (1077K)

 

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Interview with Martin Hawksey: Social Media Network Analysis with NodeXL

March 3rd, 2013 by Marc Smith · 1 Comment

Here is a video interview I did with Martin Hawksey about social media network analysis:

Martin Hawksey Google+ is the JISC CETIS Learning Technology Advisor (OER Programme Support)

jisc cetis logo

Follow @mhawksey

Thanks to Martin for the time!

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How to plot a network in a “polar” layout using NodeXL

March 3rd, 2013 by Marc Smith · 4 Comments

When a particular node in a network is of special interest it can be useful to create a network visualization in which it is located at the center of concentric rings of vertices.

NodeXL supports a “Polar” layout in which each vertex has two values that govern its location: distance from center (“Vertex Polar R”) and the angle around the clock (“Vertex Polar Angle”).

Using a random network, we added two columns to the Vertices worksheet that we called: Ring (or “Vertex Polar R”) and Rotation (or “Vertex Polar Angle”).  We then assigned values for the “Ring” and the “Rotation” for each Vertex:

2013-03-03-NodeXL-Vertex Polar Data - Ring and Rotation

These values can then be mapped to the location for each Vertex using the NodeXL Autofill columns feature:

2013-03-03-NodeXL-Autofill Vertex Polar Data

When these values are applied to the network visualization and the layout is set to “Polar” the visualization repositions each vertex into a position around a ring.  The values are set by mapping Vertex Polar R to “Ring” and Vertex Polar Angle to “Rotation” and then selecting “Autofill”.  The result is a single ring plotted around a core:

2013-03-03-NodeXL-Visualization of Vertex Polar Data

To see this more clearly, I built a larger random network with 100 vertices and added two more “rings”.  The resulting image looks like this:

2013-03-03-NodeXL-100 Polar Layout Network Edges Visualization

→ 4 CommentsTags: Foundation · Metrics · Network visualization layouts · NodeXL · SMRF · Social Media Research Foundation · Social network · Social Network Analysis · Social Theories and concepts · Visualization

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