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/2011/09/25/webshop-2011-review-4-days-20-talks-45-students-an-earthquake-a-hurricane-and-many-new-connections/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=webshop-2011-review-4-days-20-talks-45-students-an-earthquake-a-hurricane-and-many-new-connections http://www.connectedaction.net/2011/09/25/webshop-2011-review-4-days-20-talks-45-students-an-earthquake-a-hurricane-and-many-new-connections/#comments Sun, 25 Sep 2011 08:15:34 +0000 Marc Smith http://www.connectedaction.net/?p=4861  

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.

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

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.”

Institute for Communication Technology Management

http://www.marshall.usc.edu/faculty/centers/ctm/events

On March 10th, 2011 I will speak on a panel at the USC Marshall School of Business Institute for Communication Technology Management Executive Roundtable.

]]> http://www.connectedaction.net/2011/03/05/10-march-2011-usc-marshall-school-of-business-communication-technology-executive-roundtable/feed/ 0 http://www.connectedaction.net/2010/10/17/october-22nd-2010-marc-smith-talk-at-northwestern-university/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=october-22nd-2010-marc-smith-talk-at-northwestern-university http://www.connectedaction.net/2010/10/17/october-22nd-2010-marc-smith-talk-at-northwestern-university/#comments Sun, 17 Oct 2010 19:30:24 +0000 Marc Smith http://www.connectedaction.net/?p=3509 I visited the SONIC group at Northwestern University for a talk about social media networks on October 22, 2010.

I spoke at the University of Michigan, School of Information on October 19th, 2010 about “Charting Collections of Connections in Social Media: Mapping and Measuring Social Media Networks to Find Key Positions and Structures“.

I demonstrated the ways social network data sets can be extracted from social media services like Facebook, Twitter, email, YouTube, and flickr.  These network graphs can reveal information about the “shape” of the population in terms of the presence of sub-groups and communities within the larger population.  In addition, each individual participant is located or positioned within the graph, helping to identify the people who are “core” versus those who are peripheral, as well as those who occupy the position of “bridge” between two otherwise separate groups.

Yahoo! Speaker Series

The Yahoo Speaker Series at the School of Information supports distinguished guest lecturers from the fields of information and technology.

2010 Speaker: Marc Smith
VIDEO: Marc Smith

Marc Smith, chief social scientist with the Connected Action Social Group, presented “Charting Collections of Connections in Social Media: Mapping and Measuring Social Media Networks to Find Key Positions and Structures,” on Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2010.

Smith’s talk was sponsored by the Yahoo! Speaker Series, Michigan Interactive & Social Computing, and the School of Information.

In this talk, Smith described how networks are a data structure common across all social media systems — systems defined by enabling populations to author collections of connections. The Social Media Research Foundation‘s NodeXL project makes analysis of social media networks accessible to most users of the Excel spreadsheet application. Using NodeXL, networks become as easy to create and analyze as pie charts. Applying the tool to a range of social media networks has already revealed the variations present in online social spaces. A review of the tool and images of Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and e-mail networks will be presented, illustrating different patterns created when communities, brands, and controversies are discussed.

2010 - Sept - UC Davis CTSA SNA Community Engagement

CTSA Community Engagement and Social Network Analysis Workshop
September 22-24, 2010
University of California Davis
Clinical and Translational Science Center
Sacramento, California

OBJECTIVES

• Understand the basic concepts, tools, and techniques of Social Network Analysis (SNA) and how they relate to the evaluation of CTSAs and their impact on community research networks.
• Have sufficient exposure to a basic software tool for inputting and analyzing network data in order to undertake a simple social network analysis.
• Enumerate some possible uses of SNA and how to develop data collection tools or use existing sources to study the process and impact of CTSA on community engaged research.
• List primary authors of SNA analyses relevant to CTSA and community engaged research.

Presentation by Noshir Contractor from Northwestern University

10:30-Noon Demonstration of NodeXL Software

Marc Smith.

NodeXL is a free and open add-in for Excel that supports network overview, discovery and exploration. A contributor to NodeXL will provide basic instruction in its use, how to generate useful network statistics and metrics, how to create visualizations of network graphs and how to filter and display attributes that can be used to highlight important structures in networks.

1:00-1:45 Using NodeXL

Joe Hunt, MPH, Indiana University (with Marc Smith)

Using NodeXL to visualize interactions between investigators and CTSA key functions.

The Second Workshop on Information in Networks
September 24-25, 2010, New York City

Sponsored in part by the Initiative on Information in Networks
Organizers: Sinan Aral, Foster Provost, Arun Sundararajan

The second Workshop on Information in Networks (WIN10) will be held this year September 24-25, 2010, again in New York City. From the program description:

“Last year’s workshop brought together a small yet influential community around topics that at their core involve ‘information in networks‘—its distribution, its diffusion, its value, and its influence on social and economic outcomes. Scholars from fields as diverse as computer science, economics, information systems, marketing, physics, political science and sociology came together to lay the foundation for ongoing relationships and to build a multidisciplinary research community. This year’s workshop will build on this foundation toward bringing more innovative content and vibrant discussion to the forum. Speakers will share their recent research, which may have been published elsewhere, but which may not be widely known outside of their own disciplines. The workshop will combine invited and contributed talks with poster presentations selected from a pool of submitted abstracts. We hope the energy of New York City will inspire the gathering, and that our participants will leave with new ideas and a renewed sense of community.”

Ben Shneiderman and Jenny Preece will speak about their work on social media applied to national priorities with a talk titled: “Promoting National Initiatives for Technology-Mediated Social Participation“.  The talk includes their work creating NSF workshops on Technology-Mediated Social Participation (www.tmsp.umd.edu), the paper Reader-to-Leader Framework: Motivating technology-mediated social participation (which appeared in the AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction in March 2009), and recent work with the Encyclopedia of Life (www.eol.org), and  NodeXL projects.  Here is the abstract.

WIN10 speakers include:
==============================
Ron Burt, University of Chicago
Nicholas Christakis, Harvard University
Nathan Eagle, MIT
Sanjeev Goyal, Cambridge University
Matthew Jackson, Stanford University
Jenny Preece, University of Maryland
Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland
Tony Jebara, Columbia University
David Jensen, University of Massachussetts
Michael Kearns, University of Pennsylvania
Rachel Kranton, Duke University
David Lazer, Northeastern University
Mark Newman, University of Michigan (tentative)
Alex Sandy Pentland, MIT
Alessandro Vespignani, Indiana University
Stanley Wasserman, Indiana University
Duncan Watts, Yahoo! Research

A new paper on visualizing social media has been released on the University of Maryland, Human Computer Interaction Laboratory tech report archive.  Co-authored by Derek Hansen,  myself, and Ben Shneiderman, the paper describes and visualizes the patterns of connections formed when people tweet about events like conferences and news stories.

EventGraphs_2010_HCIL_Tech_Report

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

Hansen, D., Smith, M., Shneiderman, B.
EventGraphs: Charting Collections of Conference Connections
HCIL-2010-13

EventGraphs are social media network diagrams constructed from content selected by its association with time-bounded events, such as conferences. Many conferences now communicate a common “hashtag” or keyword to identify messages related to the event. EventGraphs help make sense of the collections of connections that form when people follow, reply or mention one another and a keyword. This paper defines EventGraphs, characterizes different types, and shows how the social media network analysis add-in NodeXL supports their creation and analysis. The paper also identifies the structural and conversational patterns to look for and highlight in EventGraphs and provides design ideas for their improvement.

Ben Shneiderman: Methods and Tools for Facilitating Social Participation from User Experience Israel (UXI) on Vimeo.

Nice review of information visualization techniques and some mention of recent work on the NodeXL project.

http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/soh/

The HCIL Government Applications of Social Media Networks &
Communities Workshop, as part of the 27th Annual Human Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL) Symposium, at the University of Maryland, examined how social media can be systematically applied to increase civic participation on national priorities.

When: Friday, May 28, 2010, 9:30am-4:00pm
Where: CSIC Building, UMD, College Park
Who: Government thought leaders, system developers, and agencies; industry partners, researchers, and students

Photo by Ben Shneiderman

Front row (left to right): Brad Hesse, Betsy Rebert, Claudia Louis,
Vladimir Barash, Derek Hansen, Robin Naughton.
Middle row: Scot Golder, Rex Robison, Yan Qu, Joe Pringle, Natasa
Milic-Frayling, Amanda Shanor, Leonard Lidov, Laura Milner
Back row: Robert Altiero, Mark Edson, Keith Walker, Tim Clausner, Marc
Smith, Nick Violi, Brian Dennis, Manuel Freire, John Bertot, Derrick
Cogburn, Jennifer Preece, Francy Stilwell

Not pictured: Ben Shneiderman

The Friday, May 28th all day event focused on the use of social media data in improving the quality of government.

May 28th, 2010: Government Applications of Social Media Networks and Communities
Derek Hansen, Marc Smith, Jenny Preece, Ben Shneiderman
Federal, state, and local governments are discovering interesting and ambitious ways that social media can be used to increase civic participation in decision-making, health-care /wellness, energy sustainability, education, disaster response, community safety, scientific research, etc. This workshop will invite attendees to present current projects, design strategies, evaluation methods, and analytic tools. Issues such as universal accessibility & usability, privacy protection, and reliability will be discussed.

Attendees …
• discussed interesting and ambitious ways that federal, state, and local governments are using social media in decision-making,healthcare/wellness, energy sustainability, education, disaster response, community safety, scientific research, etc.

• explored how analytic tools like NodeXL (http://nodexl.codeplex.com/) can help systematically analyze social media initiatives and mine social media sites for useful information.

• identified the unique challenges of using social technologies in a government context and design strategies and policies that help overcome those challenges

Participants included:
• Vladimir Barash, Doctoral student, Information Science, Cornell University
• John Bertot, Professor, iSchool, UMD
• Derek Hansen – Assistant Professor, iSchool, UMD and director of Center for the Advanced Study of Communities and Information (CASCI)
• Scott Golder, Doctoral student, Sociology, Cornell University
• Bradford Hesse, Chief of the National Cancer Institute’s Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch (HCIRB)
• Natasa Milic-Frayling, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research Cambridge
• Cynthia Parr, Director, Special Pages Group, Encyclopedia of Life, Smithsonian
• Jenny Preece – Dean, iSchool, UMD.
• Ben Shneiderman – Professor, Department of Computer Science, UMD, and founder of the Human Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL).
• Marc Smith – Chief Social Scientist, Connected Action Consulting Group, director of the Social Media Research Foundation

Slides available from:

http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/soh/workshop_hansen.shtml

Schedule

8:30 – 9:30am: registration and continental breakfast

9:30am: Introductions

10:00am: “Technology-Mediated Social Participation: Promoting a Research Agenda” Ben Shneiderman & Jenny Preece, University of Maryland

10:30am: “Enabling Citizen Mapping of Government Networks with NodeXL” – Marc Smith & Derek Hansen, Connected Action and University of Maryland

10:50am: Break

11:00am: “Open Government, Social Media, and Information Policy: Constraints and Barriers” – John Bertot, University of Maryland

11:20am: “New Approaches to Collecting Public Input Online” – Joe Pringle, Forum One Communications

11:40am: “Visualizing Social Data to Improve Diplomacy” – Leonard Lidov, Morningside Analytics

12:00 – 1:00pm: lunch

1:00pm: “Using New Media for Citizen Engagement: Experiences from the General Services Administration” – Leilani Martinez, Center for New Media & Citizen Engagement, U.S. General Services Administration (GSA)

1:30pm: “Supporting Lifelong Learning & Institutional Transformation with New Media” – Michael Edson, Web and New Media Strategy, Smithsonian Institution

1:50pm: “Says who? Legitimacy in Online Collective Action: Enthusiasts and Interest Groups in Wiki Government” – Scott Golder & Vladimir Barash, Cornell University

2:10pm: “From Research of Social Media to Socially Mediated Research” – Natasa Milic-Frayling, Microsoft Research, Cambridge UK

2:30pm: Break

3:00pm: “Health 2.0: Putting the Power of Open Science to the Task of Improving the Nation’s Health” – Bradford Hesse, Health Comm & Informatics Research Branch, National Cancer Institute

3:20pm: Wrap-up discussion

4:00pm: Depart

Technology-Mediated Social Participation: Promoting a Research Agenda

Jenny Preece and Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland

With support from the National Science Foundation, we have run two research agenda-setting workshops that clarify how social media can address national priorities.  The first, in Palo Alto, CA engaged companies and the second in the Washington, DC area reached out to government agencies.  Our report will describe the national priorities that can be addressed, deep science theories, technology challenges, and scope of educational changes needed in K-12, universities, professional training, and citizen awareness.

Enabling Citizen Mapping of Government Networks with NodeXL

Marc Smith & Derek Hansen, Connected Action Consulting Group and University of Maryland

Social network analysis can serve as a powerful analysis and visualization method to understand connections between people and institutions. Until recently, only those with advanced degrees and technical know-how have been able to perform social network analysis. We will introduce NodeXL, a plugin for Excel 2007, that allows non-technical experts perform social network analysis, particularly of social media networks of interest. We will discuss applications of NodeXL to government data and social media initiatives.

Open Government, Social Media, and Information Policy: Constraints and Barriers

John Bertot, University of Maryland

Much movement and discussion surrounds the use of social media technologies by the federal government in order to create a more open, transparent, and participatory government.  Since the inauguration of the Obama Administration, government agencies have been required to engage in open dialogs, create open government plans, and otherwise use a range of social media technologies.  But these efforts belie an antiquated and contradictory information policy environment that hampers innovation and use of a range of participatory technologies by government agencies such as twitter, facebook, and YouTube.  Though agencies currently are using these technologies, there are a number of policies (e.g., laws, memos, administrative code) that prevent agencies from truly engaging in innovative uses and practices through social media technologies.  This presentation identifies selected policy conflicts and considerations that need resolution for federal government agencies to be able to successfully engage the use of participatory technologies.

New Approaches to Collecting Public Input Online

Joe Pringle, Forum One Communications

Federal government agencies are experimenting with social media, crowdsourcing, and other collaborative approaches to soliciting, collecting, and responding to public input.  This includes everything from formal rulemaking comment collection to ideascale events to online brainstorms such as USAID’s recent Global Pulse event.  Chris will highlight common online approaches to using social media and collaborative approaches for collecting input, provide some examples about who is doing what, what’s working, what’s not working, and why.

Visualizing Social Data to Improve Diplomacy

Leonard Lidov, President, Morningside Analytics

This talk will focus on how Dr. Lidov’s firm, Morningside Analytics, uses data visualization to understand public diplomacy, both in and outside government.  Morningside’s signature “dot-maps” picturing “Attentive Clusters” in the blogosphere have been featured in the media and opened business development doors in DC (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124658422588090107.html ), but they are just one of several innovative approaches the firm uses to help clients understand how its network analyses can improve their understanding of how messages move in the online “Link Economy.

Using New Media for Citizen Engagement: Experiences from the General Services Administration

Leilani Martinez, Center for New Media & Citizen Engagement, U.S. General Services Administration (GSA)

This presentation will discuss several new media initiatives overseen by the Center for New Media & Citizen Engagement, part of the General Services Administration of the federal government. These will include discussions of developing tools, methods, and best practices related to using new media by government to engage citizens. Examples will include a citizen engagement tool used by 23 agencies to gather input for their open government plans, the Citizen Engagement Platform, and FedSpace, a secure intranet and collaborative workspace for government employees and contractors.

Supporting Lifelong Learning & Institutional Transformation with New Media

Michael Edson, Director of Web and New Media Strategy, Smithsonian Institution

The Smithsonian Institution’s Web and New Media Strategy that talks about an updated digital experience, a new learning model that helps people with their “lifelong learning journeys,” and the creation of a Smithsonian Commons-a new part of the Smithsonian’s digital presence dedicated to stimulating learning, creation, and innovation through open access to Smithsonian research, collections and communities. This talk describes the commons concept in the context of 21st century knowledge creation and the methods and drivers of organizational change.

Says who? Legitimacy in Online Collective Action: Enthusiasts and Interest Groups in Wiki Government

Scott Golder and Vladimir Barash, Cornell University

With the expansion of the World Wide Web, online communities have emerged focused on government and civic activities. These communities allow a wide user base to participate in everything from election campaigns to opinion polls to the legislative process (by making it easier for individuals to interact with members of local, state and federal government). The emergence of these communities has led to a greater citizen participation but has also opened up new venues for special interest groups to sway public opinion. For instance, politically oriented communities (dailykos, the free republic) advertise links to popular opinion polls and encourage their members to vote in such polls en masse, creating a cascade of skewed opinion. We explore the issues related to creating venues of open (often unregulated) online participation in the government process, and the role special interest groups play in these venues.

From Research of Social Media to Socially Mediated Research

Natasa Milic-Frayling, Principal Researcher and Director of Research Partnership, Microsoft Research, Cambridge UK

We are witnessing the ultimate assimilation of computing technology by the masses: millions of online users have adopted social media as part of their daily routine. At the same time, researchers are striving to understand the principles of sustaining social media and the implications the new practices have on research itself. In this presentation we discuss insights about two important aspects. First is the delicacy of social media design where seemingly small changes can cause a dramatic difference in the character of the online community. This applies to both UI features that facilitate interaction and the reward mechanism that administrators introduce to motivate specific behaviours. Second is the emergence of new methodologies that leverage the principles of social media. They are adopted by groups of individuals to achieve their common objectives. We illustrate how, for example, the issue of scale can be addressed through the use of games to mobilize a community of practice.

Health 2.0: Putting the Power of Open Science to the Task of Improving the Nation’s Health

Bradford Hesse, Chief, Health Comm & Informatics Research Branch, National Cancer Institute

Fourth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media
(ICWSM-10)
May 23-26, 2010
George Washington University, Washington, DC

Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence

The ICWSM 2010 conference starts Sunday.  This is a very high quality conference on the study of social media.  My colleague, Professor Derek Hansen, and I will lead a tutorial on using NodeXL to analyze social media networks.

SA2: Introduction to Social Media Network Analysis
Marc Smith (Connected Action) and
Derek Hansen (University of Maryland)

Social networks are the defining data structure of social media, created as people reply, link, click, favorite, friend, re-tweet, co-edit, mention, or tag one another. In this tutorial, we review the core concepts and methods of social network analysis and apply it to the collection, analysis, and visualization of social media networks. Using the free and open NodeXL application, learn how to extract a social media network and generate metrics and visualizations that highlight key people and positions within streams of tweets, videos, photos, or emails.

I am joining Media-X at Stanford University as a visiting scholar.

I will work with Martha Russell and Chuck House in applying social network analysis to social media research.

You can email me at masmith1@stanford.edu!

Our next event will be in late July and will focus on the use of social media analysis for mapping patterns of investment and innovation.

Along with my colleague Eduarda Mendes-Rodriguez I will be speaking at the University of Porto next Friday, March 26th.

Hands-on Workshop – Social Media Network Analysis in NodeXL

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. Social Network Analysis is a set of tools, concepts, and techniques that can help measure a graph and the location and connection pattern of each component part.

Using NodeXL, workshop participants will learn how to take data from common social media sources (including enterprise discussions and online communities, Twitter, Flickr, your own email) and perform various types of analysis. Through 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.
· 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.

After speaking at the Israel Internet Association conference February 22, I will speak at IBM Research in Haifa at an event co-sponsored by the University of Haifa Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the M.A. program in Sociology of Technology.  My hosts are Professor Gustavo Mesch from the university and Dr. Adam Perer from IBM research.

Wednesday, February 24^th, 1 pm

IBM Building
Haifa University

Title: Visualizing collections of social media connections: using social network analysis to assess, evaluate and measure social media engagement

Abstract: Social networks are created whenever people interact.  These networks become more visible when interactions take place through social media.  Social networks form when people link, reply, comment, edit, tag, and friend one another.  Sub-populations are formed whenever people mention the same company, products, event, topic, or personality.  Using social network analysis on collections of social media connections reveals important patterns: how are people clustered and grouped, where are the gaps, who plays the roles of bridge, hub, and isolate? In this talk I will display maps of twitter, you tube, flickr, and enterprise email systems and demonstrate several tools that can be used to collect, analyze, map and monitor social media, including the free and open NodeXL (network overview, discovery and exploration) add-in Excel 2007.

Here, for example, is a map of the connections among people who recently mentioned “haifa” in twitter sized by number of followers:

Some photos taken during the trip are available after the jump:

There are hundreds of conferences sponsored by the ACM on almost every topic related to computing.  In some cases the same person will publish a paper in more than one conference, creating a tie between them.  Below is a network map application that displays a collection of ACM conferences connected by this authorship tie: http://bosch.informatik.rwth-aachen.de:5080/AERCS/Networks.jsp

The application is a project created by Manh Cuong Pham a graduate student at RWTH Aachen University, Dept. of Databases and Information Systems working with Prof. Ralf Klamma.

This image displays the isolated component that is composed of the “social” conferences in the ACM schedule: CHI, CSCW, DIS, UIST, GROUP, ECSCW, and Interact.  The overview illustrates the macro structure of the graph, with the prominent giant cluster of core computer science topics like algorithms, machine learning, and logic.  The rows below this cluster are populated by an archipelago of conferences, a few composed of ten to twenty conferences, but most made up of two to five conferences.  These are the more marginal topics in the ACM world, in contrast to the conferences at the cores of the giant component.

It would be nice to see the application add additional network display attributes like size, color, shape, edge thickness to indicate conference attributes like papers published, cited, attendees, and sponsors.  It is a nice example of the insights network visualizations can bring to a data set and the value of an interactive interface (and a web interface at that!) for investigating complex graphs.

Prof. Jen Golbeck and Justin Grimes analyzed 6,000 tweets from United States Congress members.  They found some interaction but a dominant broadcast pattern of use with a focus on self-promotion.  The Washington Post headlines the results as “Tweeting Their Own Horns Study Finds Posts By Lawmakers Boastful or Boring”

Here is the video:

From the UMD News desk:
“A new study by University of Maryland researchers finds a
growing use of Twitter among members of Congress, but that
the purpose and content of their messages fall short of
improving government transparency.

Jennifer Golbeck, assistant professor in the College of Information
Studies, Maryland’s iSchool, a doctoral student and an undergraduate
assistant analyzed more than 5,000 tweets sent by 69 members of
Congress in February. They found that House and Senate members
were using the social media platform mostly to promote themselves,
rather than engage in dialogue with constituents and the public at large.

“Members of Congress were not sharing much new information on
Twitter, and there were few posts that improve transparency,”
Golbeck says.”

Peter Pirolli, research at PARC, presented the keynote about the challenges and opportunities for the use of social media to address social problems.

There is growing interest in this space, for example NSF funding was significantly increased this year. For example, there is the new NSF Social-Computational Systems (SoCS) program: http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503406&org=NSF&sel_org=NSF&from=fund

President Obama’s recent speech to the National Academy of Science (http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer) sets some of the context for this group’s vision, he speaks about crowd sourcing and its impact on science. (See minute 28:30) video is on the web site of the National Academy of Science http://edg1.vcall.com/video/nas/launch.asp

“I have charged the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy with leading a new effort to ensure that federal policies are based on the best and most unbiased scientific information. I want to be sure that facts are driving scientific decisions – and not the other way around.

As part of this effort, we’ve already launched a website that allows individuals to not only make recommendations to achieve this goal, but to collaborate on those recommendations; it is a small step, but one that is creating a more transparent, participatory and democratic government.”

Elsewhere in the speech there is a refernce to the role of (appropriately) digitizing medical records which I think includes the idea that people will increasingly gather online to work towards better personal health:

“The Recovery Act will support the long overdue step of computerizing America’s medical records, to reduce the duplication, waste, and errors that cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives.

But it’s important to note: these records also hold the potential of offering patients the chance to be more active participants in prevention and treatment. We must maintain patient control over these records and respect their privacy. At the same time, however, we have the opportunity to offer billions and billions of anonymous data points to medical researchers who may find in this information evidence that can help us better understand disease.”

There seems to be a role for the kinds of online communities and social media that people turn to when facing physical or medical challenges.

National Initiative for Social Participation at University of Maryland
http://iparticipate.wikispaces.com/Motivating+Scenario
http://chronicle.com/daily/2009/05/17280n.htm
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marc_smith/sets/72157617551332795/