Ines Mergel is my host.  Prof. Mergel is Assistant Professor of Public Administration, Department of Public Administration and International Affairs, and a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Technology and Information Policy at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, NY.

I will speak about the patterns we are finding in the data collected and analyzed by NodeXL.

This map of connections among people who tweeted Teaparty starts on 11/15/2011 14:22 UTC and ends on 11/15/2011 17:23, a total of 3 hours and 1 minute of traffic.

The Teaparty data set contained 1,533 tweets, replies and mentions.
Blue edges are connections created by replies and mentions. Grey lines are follows relationships.

Top most between users:
@ronpaul
@michellemalkin
@christopherhull
@theteaparty_net
@capaction
@thedailyedge
@bill1phd
@dbargen
@gulagbound
@rightcandidates

Graph Metric: Value
Graph Type: Directed
Vertices: 659
Unique Edges: 8808
Edges With Duplicates: 1423
Total Edges: 10231
Self-Loops: 1084
Connected Components: 49
Single-Vertex Connected Components: 44
Maximum Vertices in a Connected Component: 606
Maximum Edges in a Connected Component: 10148
Maximum Geodesic Distance (Diameter): 6
Average Geodesic Distance:2.693965
Graph Density: 0.02036797
NodeXL Version: 1.0.1.193

The major clusters are composed of teaparty supporters. The center bottom cluster are teaparty critics.

This map of the connections among people who tweeted Occupywallstreet starts on 11/15/2011 23:08 and ends on 11/15/2011 23:34 UTC, a total of 26 minutes of traffic.

Occupywallstreet 1,370 tweets, replies and mentions
Blue edges are connections created by replies and mentions. Grey lines are follows relationships.

Top most between users:
@occupywallst
@mmflint
@nyclu
@allisonkilkenny
@andrewbreitbart
@operationleaks
@occupydenver
@theatlantic
@usgeneralstrike
@rt_com

Graph Metric: Value
Graph Type: Directed
Vertices: 1000
Unique Edges: 3546
Edges With Duplicates: 826
Total Edges: 4372
Self-Loops: 794
Connected Components: 241
Single-Vertex Connected Components: 230
Maximum Vertices in a Connected Component: 747
Maximum Edges in a Connected Component: 3998
Maximum Geodesic Distance (Diameter): 7
Average Geodesic Distance: 2.65438
Graph Density: 0.003246246
NodeXL Version: 1.0.1.194

Some notable contrasts:
Teaparty Graph Density: 0.002652645
Occupywallstreet Graph Density: 0.02036797 – significantly lower levels of interconnection
Teaparty: Single-Vertex Connected Components 44 of 1000
Occupywallstreet: Single-Vertex Connected Components 283 of 1000

Many more “isolates” (Single-Vertex Connected Components) in Occupywallstreet.
Many more hubs, and more retweeting activity in Occupywallstreet.

The difference in duration of these data sets illustrates the relative speed of content creation in the topics. The data sets are commensurable in that they are both the result of a single query against the Twitter search API. So both maps are the results of charting connections among the authors of the last 1500 tweets, how ever long that takes to create.

Methodologies for Web and Social Media Data Analysis in Social Science and Policy Research

CCSR Short Course
Social Media Network Analysis using NodeXL

November 9th  9.00 am – 5.30 pm.

Marc Smith
Social Media Research Foundation
http://www.smrfoundation.org

Course Summary: Networks are everywhere in the natural and social world.  New tools are making the task of getting, processing, measuring, visualizing and gaining insights from network data sets easier than ever before.  The rise of social media offers a new and abundant source of network data.  The NodeXL project (http://www.codeplex.com/nodexl) from the Social Media Research Foundation (http://www.smrfoundation.org) offers a free and open path to network overview, discovery and exploration within the context of the familiar Excel spreadsheet.  In this short course we will introduce the NodeXL application and review the landscape of networks, social networks, and social media networks. Using the tool, non-programmers can quickly select a network of interest from various social media and other data sources.  Twitter, flickr, YouTube, email, the World Wide Web, and Facebook data can be quickly imported into NodeXL.  Networks can then be analyzed and visualized using tools similar to those used to create a pie chart or line graph [1].  As the challenge and cost of network acquisition and analysis drops, abundant data sets are being generated that document the range of variation of diverse sources of social media.  How many different kinds of Twitter hashtags exist?  Using snapshots of hundreds of hashtags collected over a year, it is now possible to build rough taxonomies of this kind of social media.  NodeXL provides access to a web gallery of data [2], allowing users to browse existing data sets and upload their own as well. Borrowing the vision of telescope arrays that create composite images far better than any individual instrument could, the Social Media Research Foundation envisions an user generated archive that provides a research asset that supports the collective effort to understand the structures and dynamics of network data.

[1] NodeXL Image Gallery: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marc_smith/sets/72157622437066929/
[2] NodeXL Graph Gallery: http://nodexlgraphgallery.org

Course Objectives
After this course, participants will:

(1) Be familiar with the basic concepts of networks, social networks and social media networks
(2) Understand the core features of the NodeXL network analysis and visualization tool
(3) Review images and data sets for dozens of different social media networks
(4) Learn to identify general types of social media networks along with the key people and groups within them

Target Audience
This course is suitable for people with some experience or interest in social media, social science, or social network analysis.  It is particularly appropriate for those who are involved in studying social structures and their change over time.

Laboratory and IT requirements:
Participants will need access to a computer connected to the Internet  and will be supplied with the free NodeXL software.

Suggested Reading
Analyzing social media networks with NodeXL: Insights from a connected world
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0123822297?ie=UTF8&tag=conneactio-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0123822297

EventGraphs:
http://www.cs.umd.edu/localphp/hcil/tech-reports-search.php?number=2010-13

Visualizing the Signatures of Social Roles in Online Discussion Groups:
http://www.cmu.edu/joss/content/articles/volume8/Welser/

Discussion catalysts in online political discussions: Content importers and conversation starters
http://www.connectedaction.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/2009-JCMC-Discussion-Catalysts-Himelboim-and-Smith.pdf

Analyzing (Social Media) Networks with NodeXL
http://www.connectedaction.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/2009-CT-NodeXL-and-Social-Queries-a-social-media-network-analysis-toolkit.pdf

Whiter the experts: Social affordances and the cultivation of experts in community Q&A systems
http://www.connectedaction.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/2009-Social-Computing-Whither-the-Experts.pdf

First steps to NetViz Nirvana: evaluating social network analysis with NodeXL
http://www.cs.umd.edu/~cdunne/pubs/Bonsignore09Firststepsto.pdf

]]> http://www.connectedaction.net/2011/11/05/november-8-2011-university-of-manchester-nodexl-sna-social-media-workshop/feed/ 0 http://www.connectedaction.net/2011/10/16/threadmill-0-1-social-accounting-for-message-thread-collections/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=threadmill-0-1-social-accounting-for-message-thread-collections http://www.connectedaction.net/2011/10/16/threadmill-0-1-social-accounting-for-message-thread-collections/#comments Sun, 16 Oct 2011 13:00:44 +0000 Marc Smith http://www.connectedaction.net/?p=4387 The Social Media Research Foundation is pleased to announce the immediate availability of ThreadMill 0.1.  ThreadMill is a free and open application that consumes message thread data and produces reports about each author, thread, forum, and board along with visualizations of the patterns of connection and activity.  ThreadMill is written in Ruby, and depends on MongoDB, SinatraRB, HAML, and Flash to collect, analyze, and report data about collections of conversation threads.

Threaded conversations are a major form of social media.  Message boards, email and email lists, twitter, blog comments, text messages, and discussion forums are all social media systems built around the message thread data structure.  As messages are exchanged through these systems, some messages are sent as a reply to a particular previous message.  As messages are sent in reply to prior messages, chains of messages form.  Message chains come in two major forms: branching and non-branching.  Branching threads are those that allow more than one message to reply to a prior message.  Non-branching threads are single chains, like a string of pearls, that allow only one message to reply to a prior message.  Many web based message boards are non-branching.  Many email systems and discussion forums are branching.

ThreadMill requires a minimal set of data elements to generate its reports.  A data table must minimally have a column of information for each message that includes the name of the message board, the forum, the thread, and the author, along with a unique identifier for each message and the date and time it was posted.  Optional data elements include the unique identifier of the message being replied to, the URL of the message, and the URL for a profile photo.

All forms of threaded message exchange can be measured.  Simple measures like the count of the number of messages or the number of authors are obvious and useful.  Other measures can be created from more sophisticated analysis.  For example, the network of connections that forms as different authors reply to one another can be extracted and analyzed using network analysis methods.  It is possible to calculate metrics from these networks of reply that describe the location of each person in the graph.

ThreadMill generates several data sets that can be used to create visualizations of the activity and structure of a message board collection.

A Treemap data set can illustrate the hierarchy of encapsulated authors within threads, threads within fora, fora within boards, and boards within collections.  Treemap visualizations of collections of threaded conversations can quickly highlight the most active or populous discussions.

An AuthorLine visualization takes the form of a double histogram, with bubbles representing each thread active in each time period sized by the volume of messages the author contributed, sorted by size.  Threads that have been initiated by the author are represented as bubbles above the center line.  Messages that the author contributes to threads started by other authors are represented as bubbles stacked below the center line.  AuthorLines quickly reveal the pattern of activity an author displays and identifies which of several types of contributors the author is.

A scatter plot visualization represents each author as a bubble in an X-Y space defined by the number of different days the author was active against the average number of messages the author contributes to the threads in which they participate.

A time series line chart reveals the days of maximum and minimum activity along with trends.

A network diagram reveals the overall structure of the discussion space and the people who occupy strategic locations within the network graph.

ThreadMill has received generous assistance from Morningside Analytics.  Bruce Woodson implemented ThreadMill.

Here is the updated map of connections among people who recently tweeted #occupywallstreet:

These are the connections among the Twitter users who recently tweeted the word OccupyWallStreet when queried on October 10, 2011, scaled by numbers of followers (with outliers thresholded). Connections created when users reply, mention or follow one another.

See: occupywallst.org/

A larger version of the image is here: www.flickr.com/photos/marc_smith/6232030871/sizes/l/in/ph…

Top most between users:
@ajenglish
@anonymousirc
@cnbc
@rawstory
@ryannewyork
@mediabistro
@blogdiva
@brentnhunter
@krenner2
@rebuilddream

Graph Metric: Value
Graph Type: Directed
Vertices: 1000
Unique Edges: 3014
Edges With Duplicates: 720
Total Edges: 3734
Self-Loops: 994
Connected Components: 318
Single-Vertex Connected Components: 300
Maximum Vertices in a Connected Component: 664
Maximum Edges in a Connected Component: 3326
Maximum Geodesic Distance (Diameter): 9
Average Geodesic Distance: 3.508133
Graph Density: 0.002524525
NodeXL Version1.0.1.179

More NodeXL network visualizations are here: www.flickr.com/photos/marc_smith/sets/72157622437066929/

Link: www.flickr.com/photos/marc_smith/6225446144/

Each user is scaled by numbers of followers (with outliers thresholded). Connections created when users reply, mention or follow one another.

See: occupywallst.org/

A larger version of the image is here: www.flickr.com/photos/marc_smith/6225446144/sizes/l/in/ph…

Top most between users:
@maddow
@motherjones
@aclu
@zerohedge
@mmfa
@spread4freedom
@diggrbiii
@angelsavant
@marychastain
@katiepavlich

Graph Metric: Value
Graph Type: Directed
Vertices: 1000
Unique Edges: 3835
Edges With Duplicates: 916
Total Edges: 4751
Self-Loops: 1109
Connected Components: 311
Single-Vertex Connected Components: 301
Maximum Vertices in a Connected Component: 678
Maximum Edges in a Connected Component: 4327
Maximum Geodesic Distance (Diameter): 9
Average Geodesic Distance: 3.283708
Graph Density: 0.003408408
NodeXL Version: 1.0.1.179

More NodeXL network visualizations are here: www.flickr.com/photos/marc_smith/sets/72157622437066929/

I have enjoyed and been educated by my previous visits to South Africa and the Mobile Web in Africa conference, now in its 3rd year.

MWA gathers the many parts of the picture of mobile technologies in play across the African continent.

I will speak again at this year’s event, focusing on social media networks.  My partner is Walter Pike, a marketing professional with a specialty in digital media.

Here is the agenda for the workshop on Friday, November 25th.

Photos from the prior two years of Mobile Web Africa after the jump:

2010

2009

Summer Social Webshop
on
Technology-Mediated Social Participation
University of Maryland, College Park
August 23-26, 2011

Eventful.  The 2011 Webshop at the University of Maryland was certainly that with both an earthquake and a hurricane to mark the start and end of the event.  We really moved heaven and earth at this workshop.

In 4  days, 20 talks, 45 students, an earthquake, a hurricane and many new connections – the Webshop touched on a set of related concepts, methods, and findings about ways to use communication and computation technology to help groups, neighborhoods, cities, states, and nations work collectively towards common goals.

Several years ago a program at the University of Maryland called “Webshop” (Web Workshop) was organized by Professor John Robinson and held for three consecutive Summers.  I visited and spoke at two of these events and know many people who attended or spoke at one or more and remember the event enthusiastically.   The students who attended include some of the now leading researchers in the field of social science studies of the internet.  There is an impressive alumni list.

The last Webshop was held in 2003 and many years and significant changes have occurred in the time since. Twitter, Facebook, StreetView, iPad,FourSquare, Android, Kinect, EC2, Mechanical Turk, Arduino, were all new or non-existent when the first Webshops were run.  Today we have more reason than ever to focus on the details and patterns of computer-mediated human association. Ever more people channel more of their communications with others through more digital media, often of the social kind.  A new data resource for the social sciences is growing in scale and promise: from billions of events it is possible to start to build a picture of an aggregate whole, and to start to grasp the terrain and landscape of social media.

After many years of inactivity, the Summer Social Webshop (@Webshop2011) happened again!  With the generous support of the National Science Foundation and additional assistance from Google Research, on August 23-26, 2011 at the University of Maryland, College Park, a group of students heard and engaged with more than two dozen leading researchers exploring digital social landscapes from a variety of perspectives.  Organized by a collaboration between the University of Maryland’s Human Computer Interaction Laboratory (HCIL), the College of Information Studies, the Sociology and Computer Science Department, and the Social Media Research Foundation, the event gathered students from a wide range of disciplines to get a concentrated dose of advanced efforts to gather data from social media and people’s understanding and practices around digital technologies.   Doctoral students in computer science, iSchools, sociology, communications, political science, anthropology, psychology, journalism, and related disciplines applied to attend the 4-day intensive workshop on Technology-Mediated Social Participation (TMSP).  The workshop explored the many ways social media can be applied to national priorities such as health, energy, education, disaster response, political participation, environmental protection, business innovation, or community safety.  The workshop attracted graduate students at US universities studying social-networking tools, blogs and microblogs, user-generated content sites, discussion groups, problem reporting, recommendation systems, mobile and location aware media creation, and other social media.

-

Organizers

Alan Neustadtl (@smilex3md) - Sociology, University of Maryland
Jennifer Preece (@jenpre) – iSchool, University of Maryland
Marc Smith(@Marc_Smith) - Social Media Research Foundation
Ben Shneiderman (@benbendc) - Computer Science, University of Maryland
PJ Rey (@pjrey) - Sociology, University of Maryland, Student Coordinator

-

Photos

I will speak at Purdue University on September 22 and 23, 2011 about mapping social media networks.

My host is Sorin Matei, professor of Communications, who has been researching the social structure of social media networks.

I will also speak at Professor Matei’s class: COM 63200 On-line Interaction and Facilitation

Here is an example map of the connections among the people who tweeted the word “Purdue” on September 16th, 2011:

Connections among the Twitter users who recently tweeted the word Purdue when queried on September 16, 2011, scaled by numbers of tweets (with outliers thresholded). Connections created when users reply, mention or follow one another.

See: www.purdue.edu/

Layout using the “Group Layout” composed of tiled bounded regions. Clusters calculated by the Clauset-Newman-Moore algorithm are also encoded by color.

(Edges connecting users are bundled and curved with recent features added to NodeXL v.177.)

A larger version of the image is here: www.flickr.com/photos/marc_smith/6155750905/sizes/o/in/ph…

Betweenness Centrality is defined here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrality#Betweenness_centrality

Clauset-Newman-Moore algorithm is defined here: pre.aps.org/abstract/PRE/v70/i6/e066111

Top most between users:
@lifeatpurdue
@jajuanjohnson
@stfu_gabby
@purdueexponent
@charliienosheen
@mbrister2
@boilerfootball
@purduesports
@hipandresanbo
@cheesebrrrrr

Graph Metric: Value
Graph Type: Directed
Vertices: 1000
Unique Edges: 4045
Edges With Duplicates: 706
Total Edges: 4751
Self-Loops: 977
Connected Components: 429
Single-Vertex Connected Components: 395
Maximum Vertices in a Connected Component: 528
Maximum Edges in a Connected Component: 4134
Maximum Geodesic Distance (Diameter): 12
Average Geodesic Distance: 3.517707
Graph Density: 0.003507508
NodeXL Version: 1.0.1.177

More NodeXL network visualizations are here: www.flickr.com/photos/marc_smith/sets/72157622437066929/

NodeXL is free and open and available from www.codeplex.com/nodexl

NodeXL is developed by the Social Media Research Foundation (www.smrfoundation.org) – which is dedicated to open tools, open data, and open scholarship.

The book, Analyzing social media networks with NodeXL: Insights from a connected world, is available from Morgan Kaufmann and from Amazon.

2011 ASA meetings are being held in Las Vega, Nevada.  Several sessions are related to the study of the social uses and effects of information technology are hosted by the Communications and Information Technology Section of the American Sociological Association (CITASA).

These are the connections among the people who recently tweeted the term “ASA2011″ on 18 August 2011.

Several papers and panels related to the sociology of the internet will take place:

Saturday, Aug 20 – 2:30pm – 4:10pm

 124. Section on Sociology of Law Paper Session. Privacy in the Digital Age: Law, Culture, and Contention I (co-sponsored with the Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements and Section on Communication and Information Technology)

Monday, Aug 22 – 8:30-9:30AM Roundtables

338. Section on Communication and Information Technology Roundtable Session

Monday, Aug 22 – 9:30-10:10AM Business and Awards Ceremony

(immediately follows roundtables)

Monday, Aug 22 – 10:30AM – 12:10PM 

376. Section on Communication and Information Technology Invited Session. Social Media in Community Action and Social Change

Monday, Aug 22 – 2:30pm – 4:10pm

419. Section on Communication and Information Technology Paper Session. New Media Frontiers: Youth and New Media

Monday, Aug 22 – 5:00-7:00PM, Section Reception, hotel suite, Caesars Palace

Location to be announced at all CITASA sessions and meetings.

Tuesday has the main day of panels and talks:

Tueday, August 23 – 10:30am – 12:10pm

514. Section on Sociology of Culture Invited Session. Privacy in the Digital Age II: Law, Culture, and Contention (co-sponsored with the Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements and Section on Communication and Information Technology)

Regular Session. Social Participant On and Off the Internet.

Session Organizer: Barry Wellman (University of Toronto)
Sunday 1030-12

The Active Few and the Sporadic Many: Making Sense of Opinion Dynamics in Online Review Systems
*Fedor Dokshin (Cornell University)

The Internet, Young Adults and Political Engagement around the 2008 Presidential Elections

*Aaron Shaw (University of California-Berkeley), Eszter Hargittai (Northwestern University)

Social movements’ use of information and communication technologies: diffusion, usefulness and empowerment

*Piotr Konieczny (University of Pittsburgh)

*=presenter

———————————–

Regular Session. Networked Individuals On and Off the Internet

Scheduled Time: Sun, Aug 21 – 2:30pm – 4:10pm

Session Participants:

Session Organizer: Barry Wellman (University of Toronto)
Presider: Barry Wellman (University of Toronto)

“If you’re not texting me, you must be old:” Age Cohort Attachment to Mobile Phones
*Amanda M. Warr (University of Alabama at Birmingham), Shelia R. Cotten (University of Alabama at Birmingham), William A. Anderson (University of Alabama at Birmingham)

The Intersection of Gender and Place in Online Health Activities
*Melinda Goldner (Union College), Timothy M. Hale (University of Alabama at Birmingham), Shelia R. Cotten (University of Alabama at Birmingham), Michael J. Stern (College of Charleston), Patricia Drentea (University of Alabama-Birmingham)

Core Discussion Networks Over Time: How the Internet Reduces Social Isolation and Increases Network Diversity
*Keith N. Hampton (University of Pennsylvania), Lauren Sessions Goulet (University of Pennsylvania)

Social Network Sites, Social Ties, and Social Capital
*Randy Lynn (George Mason University), *James C. Witte (George Mason University)

Discussant: Barry Wellman (University of Toronto)

———————————————————-

Regular Session. Digital Divides in the Internet Age
Scheduled Time: Mon, Aug 22 – 4:30pm – 6:10pm

Session Organizer: Barry Wellman (University of Toronto)
Presider: Barry Wellman (University of Toronto)
Cyberasociality and the Online Sociality Divide: Third Level Digital Divide?

*Zeynep Tufekci (University of Maryland-Baltimore County)
(Tech) Culture in Action: Using a cultural framework to describe and explain differences in technological competency

*Cassidy Puckett (Northwestern University)
Does the “Do-it-yourself approach” reduce digital inequality? Lack of digital skills and infrequent Internet use

*Uwe Matzat (Eindhoven University of Technology), Bert M. Sadowski (Eindhoven University of Technology)
Stalled Digital Divide: Gender Differences in the Use of ICT in Taiwan

*Yu-Hua Chen (National Taiwan University), Wen-Yin Chien (United Daily News)

 

Please vote on our SxSW 2012 panel:

Thanks for your vote for our SxSW panel!

Here is a map of the connections among the people who tweeted the term “AEJMC” on August 7, 2011:

The top most between people in this network are:@aejmc, @jlab, @karenrussell, @terryflynn, @natcomm, @tmccorkindale, @derigansilver, @tkell, @aejmconlineads, and @jeremyhl:

I will present a Workshop on Social Media Network Analysis and NodeXL at the 9 August 2011 – Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (http://www.aejmc.com) in St. Louis, Missouri along with my colleague Professor Hernando Rojas, from the School of Journalism & Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin – Madison.

See: http://www.aejmc.com/home/events/annual-convention/

The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) is a nonprofit, educational association of journalism and mass communication educators, students and media professionals. The Association’s mission is to promote the highest possible standards for journalism and mass communication education, to cultivate the widest possible range of communication research, to encourage the implementation of a multi-cultural society in the classroom and curriculum, and to defend and maintain freedom of communication in an effort to achieve better professional practice and a better informed public.

Our session is:

Using NodeXL for Social Network Analysis
Tuesday — 2 pm to 5 pm
Presented by Communication Theory and Methodology Division
This pre-conference workshop examines social network analysis. Social network analysis can be used to examine message boards, blogs, and friend networks (amongmany other phenomena). Participants will learn to use the NodeXL program to conduct a network analysis. For information, contact Michel M. Haigh, Pennsylvania State University at mmh25@psu.edu.

On June 22nd in New York City Wired Magazine and the Economist hosted a day of discussions and displays related to the theme of “Nextwork” hosted by Juniper Networks and located at the Tribeca Rooftop.

The Social Media Research Foundation displayed and printed  Nextwork Networks maps of the connections among the people who tweeted about the conference, the speakers, and their companies.

Visit the NextWork Network booth hosted by the Social Media Research Foundation to see a map of the connections among people who tweeted the term “NextWork“.  Networks are important data structures but the tools to access, analyze and visualize networks have been hard to use.  New tools now make networks as easy to handle as making a pie chart.  NodeXL, the free and open network overview, discovery and exploration add-in for the familiar Excel spreadsheet, makes creating network diagrams and gaining insights much simpler (see: http://nodexl.codeplex.com).  Using NodeXL, we have been collecting all the tweets that mention the NextWork event and building a network map of the ways those people connect to one another.  Not everyone is equally connected: some people occupy more strategic locations in the web of connections than others.   Find out who: request your own NodeXL social media network map for your Twitter account or the name of your company or brand (or your competitors) by dropping by the booth (or visit: http://www.smrfoundation.org/nextwork2011).

Here is an example, a map of the connections among the people who recently tweeted the name “Kevin Kelly”, one of the speakers at the event:

This is a map of the connections among the people who tweeted the term “Nextwork”:

Summer Social Webshop
on
Technology-Mediated Social Participation
University of Maryland, College Park
August 23-26, 2011

Several years ago a program at the University of Maryland called “Webshop” (Web Workshop) was organized by Professor John Robinson and held for three consecutive Summers.  I visited and spoke at two of these events and know many people who attended or spoke at one or more and remember the event enthusiastically.   The students who attended include some of the now leading researchers in the field of social science studies of the internet.  There is an impressive alumni list.

The last Webshop was held in 2003 and many years and significant changes have occurred in the time since.  Twitter, Facebook, StreetView, iPad, FourSquare, Android, Kinect, EC2, Mechanical Turk, Arduino, were all new or non-existent when the first Webshops were run.  Today we have more reason than ever to focus on the details and patterns of computer-mediated human association. Ever more people channel more of their communications with others through more digital media, often of the social kind.  A new data resource for the social sciences is growing in scale and promise: from billions of events it is possible to start to build a picture of an aggregate whole, and to start to grasp the terrain and landscape of social media.

The Summer Social Webshop (@Webshop2011) is happening again!  With the generous support of the National Science Foundation and additional assistance from Google Research, this August 23-26 at the University of Maryland, College Park, a group of students will hear and engage with more than two dozen leading researchers exploring digital social landscapes from a variety of perspectives.  Organized by a collaboration between the University of Maryland’s Human Computer Interaction Laboratory (HCIL), the College of Information Studies, the Sociology and Computer Science Department, and the Social Media Research Foundation, the event will gather students from a wide range of disciplines to get a concentrated dose of advanced efforts to gather data from social media and people’s understanding and practices around digital technologies.   Doctoral students in computer science, iSchools, sociology, communications, political science, anthropology, psychology, journalism, and related disciplines are invited to apply to attend this summer’s 4-day intensive workshop on Technology-Mediated Social Participation (TMSP).  The workshop explores the many ways social media can be applied to national priorities such as health, energy, education, disaster response, political participation, environmental protection, business innovation, or community safety.  The workshop should be of interest to graduate students at US universities studying social-networking tools, blogs and microblogs, user-generated content sites, discussion groups, problem reporting, recommendation systems, mobile and location aware media creation, and other social media.

For more information, please contact Alan Neustadtl (alan.neustadtl@gmail.com).

-

Photos

29 June – 2 July 2011
Queensland University of Technology

Tweet with the hashtag #ct2011

http://ct2011.urbaninformatics.net/

C&T 2011 OVERVIEW

The biennial Communities and Technologies (C&T) conference is the premier international forum for stimulating scholarly debate and disseminating research on the complex connections between communities – both physical and virtual – and information and communication technologies.

C&T 2011 welcomes participation from researchers, designers, educators, industry, and students from the many disciplines and perspectives bearing on the interaction between community and technology, including architecture, arts, business, design, economics, education, engineering, ergonomics, information technology, geography, health, humanities, law, media and communication studies, and social sciences. The conference program will include competitively selected, peer-reviewed papers, as well as pre-conference workshops, a doctoral consortium, and invited keynote and panel speakers.

Marcus Foth
Conference Chair

IMPORTANT DATES
30 April 2011: Workshop papers, Doctoral Consortium and Student Volunteer applications due
29 June 2011: Pre-conference workshops and Doctoral Consortium
30 June – 2 July 2011: C&T 2011 conference at QUT, Brisbane, Australia

CONFERENCE TOPICS

C&T 2011 welcomes contributions in all areas of community and technology research, design and development. In addition, we particularly invite authors to address any of the following topics:

Augmented Reality
Civic Intelligence
Context and Location Awareness
Community-centred Design and Evaluation Methodologies
Community Engagement
E-research with Communities
E-government and E-governance
Participation
Smart Community Services
Sustainability
Universal Usability and Accessibility
Urban Informatics
Tangible Interfaces for Community Interaction
Technologies of Scale Making
Visualisation Techniques
Working across Cultures

http://ct2011.urbaninformatics.net/

#ct2011

Below is one of the few videos of the late sociologist Peter Kollock giving a lecture that I know of.  It is a great example of Peter’s style: entertaining and rich with ideas and insights. The video captures Peter’s talk at Howard Rheingold’s Stanford class on “Literacy of Cooperation” – a review of computer-mediated collective action in Winter 2005. Peter speaks about strategies to avoid or resolve social dilemmas, covering the Tragedy of the Commons and Prisoner’s Dilemma situations, and applying these concepts to social media and Internet collective action.

A podcast from the Yi-Tan conference call was devoted to a discussion of Peter Kollock’s work.

If you know of additional videos of Peter, please send them my way!  marc-at-connectedaction-dot-net

I will be speaking at the Oxford Internet Institute on July 13 and 14, 2011 as part of the Summer Doctoral Program.

I will speak about the use of social network analysis and visualization techniques to analyze and understand social media.

The Summer Doctoral Program is designed to

…bring together advanced doctoral students engaged in dissertation research relating to the Internet and other ICTs. By sharing their work and learning from leading academics in the field, students can enhance the quality and significance of their thesis research and create a peer network of excellent young researchers.

The 2011 Summer Doctoral Programme will draw substantially upon the OII’s research strengths and will involve participation from many of our faculty, together with colleagues from other partner institutions. It will emphasise methodological innovation and good practice in research design, and will expose students to the benefits of discussing their research in a multi-disciplinary teaching environment.”

I will be speaking at the Jacob T. Schwartz International School for Scientific Research week long Lipari School on Computational Social Science , July 17 – July 23, 2011, Lipari Island, Italy.

This year’s program is dedicated to Computational Social Science: Text and Decisions

Speakers:

• Claudio Cioffi-Revilla: Director of the Center for Social Complexity, Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study, George Mason University, Washington DC.
• Huan Liu: Community Detection and Mining in Social Media [abstract]
  School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering, Arizona State University
• Roel Popping: Computer-assisted text analysis, and the relevance of decision making and text mining [abstract]
  Department of Sociology, University of Groningen

Tutorials

• Marc A. Smith: Charting Collections of Connections in Social Media: Maps and Measures with NodeXL [abstract]
  Chief Social Scientist, Connected Action Consulting Group
• Calogero Zarba: Introduction to matrix algebra [abstract]
  Neodata Intelligence s.r.l., Italy
• Alessandro Pluchino: Netlogo: An agent based simulation programmable environment [abstract], University of Catania, Italy

Web Science Doctoral Summer School 2011

I will be attending and speaking at the upcoming 2011 Web Science Trust Graduate Summer School tobe held at DERI, NUI Galway Ireland from July 6th to July 13th, 2011.  I will speak about social media network analysis and run a workshop on using NodeXL.  There is a packed schedule featuring a great group of researchers who are gathering at the event, including:

* Prof. Wendy Hall is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton, UK, and Dean of the Faculty of Physical and Applied Sciences.
* Prof. Nigel Shadbolt is Professor of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Deputy Head (Research) of the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton.
* Prof. Stefan Decker is a professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway, and director of the Digital Enterprise Research Institute.
* Dr. Harith Alani is a senior lecturer at the Knowledge Media Institute, where he is heading a group specialising in Social Semantics.
* Dr. Bernie Hogan is a Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. He specializes in novel methods for online data capture and analysis, especially via social media.
* Prof. Scott Kirkpatrick has a background in physics (AB Princeton, PhD Harvard) and 15 years of developing new technologies at IBM’s TJ Watson Research Center before coming to the Hebrew University in 2000.
* Prof. Enric Plaza holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science by the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) and is Research Professor of the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC).
* Prof. Steffen Staab is the director of Institute WeST – Web Science and Technologies and of the Institute for Computer Science of the University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany.
* Dr. Derek Greene is a Research Fellow at the School of Computer Science and Informatics, University College Dublin. As part of the Clique Research Cluster, his focus is on network analysis and community finding, with a particular emphasis on dynamic mobile and social media networks.
* Dr. Michael Hausenblas is a Research Fellow at DERI, NUI Galway, where he leads the Linked Data Research Centre.
* Dr. Daniele Quercia is Horizon researcher at the University of Cambridge (UK). he is interested in computational social science, web science, and social computing.
* Dr. Markus Strohmaier is an Assistant Professor at the Knowledge Management Institute, Faculty of Computer Science at Graz University of Technology.

The event is focused on the methods and theories needed to grasp the nature of the social implications of the rapid changes in the technologies of communication and computation:

“The Web is the largest technological artefact in existence, comprising a global network of information sites and services. It is a social machine, delivering information between people and communities, embedded in almost all processes of human society: education, medicine, science and technology, commerce, entertainment and social activity. It is often simply supposed that the Web is a neutral technology, a stable computing platform for the delivery of information and services. What is overlooked is that the Web is changing constantly in response to the demands of human society. Incremental innovations leads to changes in how people use the Web and in turn how Web technology responds to changed human interaction. Small technological decisions influence how individuals use the Web and ripple out to have unanticipated macro-effects. Sometimes these effects are beneficial such as the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies. Other technologies such as the rise of spam bots or ‘blackhat’ search engine optimisation techniques clutter the Web with irrelevant, distracting information. While influential corporations such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft generate huge revenues from the Web, the Web itself is owned by everyone and no-one. We need to fully understand the demands placed on the Web by human society, so that its fate does not lead to a ‘tragedy of the commons’ but to a sustainable technological resource for the future.”

http://webscience.deri.ie/index.html

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On 11 March 2011, I will be speaking at:

Organizational and Social Media Network Analysis:
Next Practices in Organizational Networks, Analytics and Media

Along with Valdis Krebs, Chief Scientist, http://thenetworkthinkers.com/

Valdis will be speaking about Organizational Network Analysis - Introduction to Enterprise Networks, followed by a InFlow 3.1 Workshop: Social Network Analysis with InFlow 3.1

I will be speaking about Social Media Network Analysis with NodeXL.

Preservation Park
1233 Preservation Park Way
Oakland, CA 94612
(510) 874-7580
(click for map)

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The event is a globally visible opportunity for the President of the United States to present the Administration’s vision for its agenda for the year to the people of the US and the world.

The hashtag #stateoftheunion is already very active in Twitter.

This is a NodeXL map of the connections among people who recently tweeted the string “stateoftheunion” on 21 January, 2011.

The most between user, @keitholbermann, is highlighted.  Two major clusters emerge, shown arbitrarily here as green and blue, and which are more clearly seen in the filtered graph below the list.

Summary network statistics:

Graph Type Directed
Vertices 1259
Unique Edges 8014
Edges With Duplicates 544
Total Edges 8558
Connected Components 306
Single-Vertex Connected Components 293
Maximum Vertices in a Connected Component 937
Maximum Edges in a Connected Component 8513
Maximum Geodesic Distance (Diameter) 9
Average Geodesic Distance 3.140191
Graph Density 0.00522786

The most “between” contributors in the network are:

@keitholbermann, @borowitzreport, @thefix, @katyinindy,
@america1first, @wbconservative, @westwingreport, @dailykos,
@writer2go, and @gottalaff

When contributors with low “betweenness” are filtered out of the graph, two dominant clusters become easier to discern.  To the left are supporters of the President and to the right are those critical of the Administration.  A representative tweet from this cluster is highlighted.

Mapping Social Networks with NodeXL:
Finding Direction in a Sea of Connection

The Community Foundation for Monterey County has a Social Network Support project that has already applied network analysis techniques to map networks of nonprofit organizations (http://www.cfmco.org/index.cfm/id/18/Social-Network-Support/). They recognize that awareness and improved methods of working in networks can provide opportunities for new ideas, increase information flow, and help systems change. Mapping networks is one method to assess the structure of communications and work patterns. As a result, the foundation is hosting a workshop on Friday, January 28th, that will focus on improving network effectiveness by creating maps with NodeXL, the free, open-source network mapping tool. The Community Foundation for Monterey County is generously opening the introductory workshop free to the community! The workshop is free but pre-registration is required (http://cfmcmapping.eventbrite.com).  If you do plan to attend, I encourage you to download NodeXL prior to the workshop and bring a Windows laptop as well as any data sets you already have and want to map during the workshop. NodeXL is compatible with Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010 and Windows XP, Vista, and 7. NodeXL is not compatible with Microsoft Office 2003 or Office 2008 for Mac.  It is possible to rent a low cost virtual Windows machines from Amazon and access them on a Mac using remote desktop (see: How to run NodeXL on a connected Mac (or other platform) using Amazon EC2). Of course, you may want to get the companion book: Analyzing social media networks with NodeXL: Insights from a connected world prior to the workshop as well.

If you cannot attend I believe there will be a video recording that will be made available shortly after the event.

This workshop is a hands-on guide to extracting and analyzing a social network graph (with NO programming). Using examples from Twitter, YouTube, Email, flickr, and participant submissions, we will review the steps needed to take a network graph from collection through analysis and visualization to insight. Learn to tell stories about key people and groups with network visualizations. Participants will receive an introduction to social network analysis and NodeXL; be able to import network data; create a network map; and generate an actionable insight from a network map.

NodeXL allows users to generate network maps by importing data from Microsoft Office Excel. Participants are encouraged to download NodeXL prior to the workshop and bring a laptop and data sets when they attend to use during the workshop.

NodeXL is available from: http://nodexl.codeplex.com/ and is a project managed by the Social Media Research Foundation with generous support from the Microsoft Research External Research Projects Group.

Friday, January 28, 2011
9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Hartnell College
411 Central Ave
CALL 208 (Center for Assessment and Lifelong Learning)
Salinas, CA

An agenda is below and full workshop description is available at:

http://www.cfmco.org/index.cfm/id/111/Workshops-Professional-Development/

The workshop is free; however space is limited to 60.

A continental breakfast will be provided.

Participants are responsible for purchasing $1.00 Hartnell College parking permit.

The CALL Building is near the parking structure on Central Avenue near Villa Street.
http://www.hartnell.edu/about/hartnell_campus.html

Agenda

Morning session:

Introduction to social network analysis, examples and use of social network maps, intro to NodeXL.

Introduction to the history of social network analysis – how to “think link“.

Core vocabulary: node/vertex, link/tie/relationship, degree, centrality, core/periphery, bridge, hole, density.

Thinking by seeing.- Visualizing networks: pictures of collections of connections.

Networks are everywhere: biological, commercial, social, technical. How to extract the networks around you: how to build your own “edge list”.

Living in a sea of tweets, links, likes, views, reads, ratings, reviews, comments, connections, tags, ties, edits, plays, check-ins, contacts, friends, follows, favorites, Networks are newly self-documenting: machine readable connections now comprise the majority of our connections with one another, making our social worlds more available to analysis than ever before.

Introduction to NodeXL: mechanics of getting a graph open, analyzed and visualized.

Hands-on: how to analyze a social graph. Using examples from Twitter, YouTube, Email, flickr, and participant submissions, we take a graph from collection through analysis and visualization. Telling stories about key people and groups with network visualizations.

Afternoon session:

Extracting networks that matter to your organization: defining the nature of the nodes and edges in a graph is the fundamental question in network analysis. Who are the people, organizations, processes, entities that matter to you and how are they tied, connected, or linked? How to query your existing logs and data sets to extract useful network graphs.

Decorating network graphs: using size, color, transparency, visibility, images, and location to better tell a story with a network graph.

Filtering a network: revealing key structures and nodes. Use dynamic filters to remove edges and nodes from the graph to reveal only those who meet specific criteria. Use a range of attributes to limit the graph to remove clutter and occlusion.

Scheduling regular data collection with NodeXL. A guide to using the free and open data collector to schedule the creation of network data sets on a regular automatic basis.

Future directions for NodeXL: time series and graph comparison, additional data sources, web interfaces.

Here are some NodeXL generated maps of recent  discussions around Wikileaks, pdfleaks, and cablegate in Twitter:

These are the connections among the people who tweeted the term “wikileaks” on 11 December 2010. The “wikileaks” account is at the center of the inner circle.  It is surrounded by a collection of very lightly interconnected people (there is a low clustering coefficient) who retweet messages from the wikileaks account.  This ring is surrounded by a thinner ring of 2nd order retweets.  This is a very common pattern for a successful “brand” or broadcast account, getting lots of retweets and, even more impressive, retweets of retweets.

The most between people who tweeted the term “wikileaks” on 11 December 2010.  The top ten: @wikileaks, @melhoresfrases, @ukelectionnews, @nonradical, @nelsonbocaranda, @linuxmall, @dominiofeminino, @resermarca, @crazy_dymnd, @rodolfomoros

Here is the data file: 20101209-NodeXL-Twitter-wikileaks

These are the connections among people who recently tweeted “pdfleaks” in Twitter on 11 December 2010.  It shares the brand/broadcast structure of the wikileaks account shown above.  After the wikileaks account itself, the second most between participant is @jeffjarvis who uniquely bridged to many people who would otherwise not be connected in this graph.

The most between people who tweeted the term pdfleaks“ on 11 December 2010.

Here is the data set: 20101211-NodeXL-Twitter-pdfleaks

The most between people who tweeted the term “cablegate” on 11 December 2010.  The cablegate discussion is more multipolar, with several high betweenness hubs connecting to otherwise separate communities.  El Pais, for example, is reaching a mostly Spanish language community.  The top ten: @anonops, @el_pais, @mparent77772, @wllawyer, @wikileaks_pp, @gdncables, @milenio, @evgenymorozov, @muschelschloss, @saladeprensa.

Here is the data set:

On November 8th, 2010 I spoke in Seoul, Korea at the 3rd International Conference on Digital Culture on the topic of “Smart Society and Civic Culture“.

Several of my colleagues also spoke at the event, including Leslie Tkach-Kawasaki from the University of Tsukuba, Japan, Han Woo Park from YeoungNam University, Korea, George Barnett from the University of California, Davis and Robert Ackland from The Australian National University, AU.

Robert Ackland from The Australian National University, AU

George Barnett from the University of California, Davis

Han Woo Park from YeoungNam University, Korea

Leslie Tkach-Kawasaki from the University of Tsukuba, Japan

Marc Smith, Connected Action Consulting Group

Han Woo Park‘s research team from YeoungNam University, Korea

I returned to South Africa to attend the 2010 edition of Mobile Web Africa, a conference focused on the remarkable adoption and development of mobile networks and technology in Africa.

The conference took place on 29th & 30th September 2010 in Johannesburg, South Africa.

I presented a workshop on social media network analysis, see: http://www.mobilewebafrica.com/marc-smith-workshop.php

The conference twitter hashtag #MWA2010 received a significant amount of traffic.  I mapped the collection of collections formed when people who tweeted “#MWA2010″ also followed, replied, or mentioned one another.  The following two EventMaps of the #MWA2010 twitter hashtag illustrates the development of the network.

Map of the connections among people who tweet “MWA2010″ on October 5th, 2010

Map of the connections among people who tweet “MWA2010″ on September 29th, 2010

The later graph is defined by three leading contributors who each generated significant retweeting along with mentions and replies.

I attended the previous 2009 Mobile Web Africa conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, organized by AllAmber Media which also featured a focus on the next wave of mobile devices and services.

Mobile is BIG in Africa.  The “Remote control of the Universe” = Mobile Phone.

The speaker from Samsung last year noted that for many Africans, the mobile device is their first and main method for managing digital objects.  A phone is not just a phone, it is a still and video camera, music player, watch, web browser, flashlight, wallet and file system.

The representative from Yonder Mobile Media noted that mobile phones have now exceeded the installed base of the previously most widely used communication technology: FM Radio.  But mobile is different from FM: mobile devices are two way, provide a method for exchanging payments, and are a primary method of access to the internet for many billions of people.  Mobile is the “first” screen for many people in Africa, not the third screen role that it plays in more developed economies.  Regional services like MXIT and The Grid are offering Internet services tailored to affordable mobile devices.

Photos from this year’s event:

Photos from last year’s event:

Photos from Cape Town: