I will give a talk and run a hands-on workshop at the upcoming Predictive Analytics World conference in San Francisco, April 15 and 16, 2013.
Talk: Monday, April 15, at 10:50-11:35AM
Track 1: Social Data – Mapping Social Media to Predict Influence and Measure Propagation
Hidden within social media streams are structures that identify the most influential voices on any topic. Social network analysis and visualization can take millions of messages and reveal the shape of the crowd and the people at the center of it. Using the free and open NodeXL application, this talk demonstrates the tools and methods needed to create detailed maps of any social media topic. Learn to map and analyze social networks extracted from email, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, message boards, and the WWW. No coding or prior experience needed!
Workshop: Tuesday, April 16, 2013 From: 6:30pm – 9:30pm
Mapping Groups of People and What They are Talking About in Social Media
Intended Audience: Social media managers and analysts, marketers, collaboration and enterprise IT, advertisers, event planners, journalists,
Knowledge Level: all skill levels, beginners particularly welcome. Should have an interest in social media. Any experience with a spreadsheet is a plus!
Workshop Description
Social media conversations are clumpy. People tend to follow and reply to people who share their views so distinct clusters emerge in many social media discussions. Often these sub-groups have distinct ways of using language, point to different URLs, and mention different hashtags, even when talking about the same topic. Simple, free and open tools can now collect and analyze these clusters of discussion, highlighting the contrasting themes in the conversation. Learn how to perform key tasks like:
- Collect social media data from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, email, flickr, WWW, message boards and other data sources
- Analyze social media network data using clustering, network metrics, and visualization
- Generate summaries of text, word usage, URLs, hahstags, and usernames
- Leverage network insights to improve engagement in conversations
This evening session provides a quick end-to-end guide to creating a social media network map with content analysis using free and open tools. Dr. Smith will demonstrate how text from social media can be clustered by applying social network techniques. An entertaining review of social science concepts and tools will provide the context for understanding social media in terms of networks.
If you can make a pie chart, new tools like the free and open NodeXL (http://nodexl.codeplex.com) make it almost as easy to make a network chart.
If you would like deeper understanding of the social media landscape around your business and brands, this workshop is for you.
What you will learn:
- Basic concepts of network analysis
- How to apply network analysis to social media
- How to summarize the discussion of multiple groups in social media
- How to identify key influential people and leading sub-groups
Example social analysis, applied to the PAW conference itself:
Schedule and Outline
- Workshop starts at 6.30pm
- 6:30 Mapping PAWCON: a guide to network mapping of social media topics
- 7:30 Network concepts: key ideas for understanding collections of connections
- 8:30 Social Media Networks: data collection, automated analysis, summarizing text
- Workshops ends at 9:30pm
Instructor
Marc A. Smith, Chief Social Scientist, Connected Action Consulting Group
Marc Smith, Ph.D., is a sociologist specializing in the social organization of online communities and computer mediated interaction. Smith leads the Connected Action consulting group (http://www.connectedaction.net) and lives and works in Silicon Valley, California. Smith is the co-editor with Peter Kollock of Communities in Cyberspace (Routledge), a collection of essays exploring the ways identity; interaction and social order develop in online groups. Along with Derek Hansen and Ben Shneiderman, he is the co-author and editor of Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL: Insights from a connected world, from Morgan-Kaufmann which is a guide to mapping connections created through computer-mediated interactions. The Connected Action consulting group applies social science methods in general and social network analysis techniques in particular to enterprise and internet social media usage. Smith received a B.S. in International Area Studies from Drexel University in Philadelphia in 1988, an M.Phil. in social theory from Cambridge University in 1990, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from UCLA in 2001. He is an adjunct lecturer at the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland. Smith is also a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Media-X Program at Stanford University.
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