May 1st, 2015 at LSU: NodeXL social media networks talk at the “Telling Stories and Using Visuals for Coastal Environmental Communication” workshop

02MarMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

The National Association of Science Writers has funded a workshop at Louisiana State University, on “Telling Stories and Using Visuals for Coastal Environmental Communication” on Friday, May 1, 2015. I will speak during a session on “Social Media Best Practices and Mapping for Science & Environmental Communication,” to give workshop attendees both theoretical and also a practical tutorial on using NodeXL and mapping social networks in the interest of effective science communication.

More information about the workshop can be found at https://showmethecoast2015.wordpress.com/.

For example, this is a network of connections among people who tweeted about Scientific Communication:

29-30 September at the University of Melbourne – Talk about social media networks

07SepMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

Best Practice in Data Journalism Workshop

PROGRAM
29-30 September 2014

Terrace Lounge, Level 1, Walter Boas Building, Parkville Campus

(Campus map at http://maps.unimelb.edu.au/parkville)

MONDAY 29 SEPTEMBER

9-9.30AM	REGISTRATION AND WELCOME
9.30-9.45am	WELCOME AND INTRODUCTIONS- DR MARGARET SIMONS AND CARLTON CONNECT
9.45am-11	Presentations and Q and A from journalists: Marc Moncrieff and Craig Butt – Fairfax Media; Lisa Cornish – Red Cross (formerly News Corp); Harrison Polites – Business Spectator.
11-11.30	MORNING TEA
11.30-12.30	Presentations by Journalists (continued): Ed Tadros – Australian Financial Review; Matt Liddy, ABC; Nick Evershed – The Guardian in Australia.
12.30-1PM	ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION AND IDENTIFICATION OF COMMON THEMES AND CHALLENGES
1PM-2PM	LUNCH
2PM-2.30pm	AURIN – Exploring the potential – Presentation by Professor Richard Sinnott, University of Melbourne.
2.30-3pm	NodeXL – Exploring the potential – Presentation by Marc Smith, Director, Social Media Research Foundation
3-3.30pm	AFTERNOON TEA
3.30PM-5PM	Panel Session – Big Data. What Next? With Craig Thomler (Delib), Professor Paul Jensen (Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Melbourne); Jodie McVernon, (School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne), Scott Ewing, (World Internet Project, Swinburne Institute for Social Research.)

There will be a 3 hour session introducing NodeXL on Tuesday from 2-5pm 30th September at the main Parkville campus of UniMelb. The event is open to the public and is free.

It will be in the Old Arts Building Lecture Theatre B.

The main session will run from 2-4pm and there will be an additional hour for those that want to stop on for further training, finishing at 5pm

If you want to use NodeXL in the session, you will need a Windows laptop, and the Windows version of Excel (2007/2010/2013).

You can download NodeXL in advance from: http://nodexl.codeplex.com/.

Map and Building:

http://maps.unimelb.edu.au/parkville/building/149#.VCTinmS1Zlo

Download instructions:

http://nodexl.codeplex.com/releases/view/117659

Upcoming 2014 NodeXL Talks, Workshops, and Training

13MarMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

Upcoming talks, workshops and training for social media network analysis and NodeXL.

March 16, 2014: Predictive Analytics World, San Francisco.

Track 1: Social Media Analysis Think Link! Network Insights with No Programming Skills

March 18: Consortium for Service Innovation Annual Member Summit

April 2 – April 4, 2014, UCDC Center, Washington DC, USA, 2014 International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, & Prediction (SBP14)

April 24-24, 2014 The Next Web, Amsterdam

May 1-2, 2014: The Social Media & Web Analytics Summit

May 8th, 2014: 2014 SQL PASS Business Analytics Conference in San Jose.

May 19-23, 2014: International Conference on Collaboration Technologies and Systems, Minneapolis, Minnesota

June 27-29 2014: Networks in the Global World 2014. Bridging Theory and Methods: American, European and Russian Studies

April 24-25, 2014: TheNextWeb – Amsterdam – NodeXL talk about mapping social media networks

09MarMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

I spoke at TheNextWeb 2014 in Amsterdam on April 25th.

Here is a map of the connections among the people who recently tweeted the terms: tnwconference OR #TNWEurope OR thenextweb

This is a highly fragmented “Brand” network pattern with several prominent Broadcast hub and spoke structures centered around the most central participants: @thenextweb, @ow, @epro, @nicolasfordham, @gcouros, @malchord, @martinsfp, @plagia3, @k5launch, @taxion2.

I spoke about how anyone who can make a pie chart can now make these network maps and reports.

Interested in a map for a topic important to you? Request a free sample NodeXL social media network map and report.

April 2-4, 2014 Social Computing, Behavioral Modeling and Prediction Conference in Washington D.C.

06MarMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

I will present a tutorial on social media network analysis at the 2014 International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, & Prediction (SBP14)
April 2 – April 4, 2014
UCDC Center
Washington DC, USA

The 2014 International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, and Prediction (SBP14) is a multidisciplinary conference with a single paper track and poster session. SBP invites a small number of high quality tutorials and nationally recognized keynote speakers.

The SBP conference provides a forum for researchers and practitioners from academia, industry, and government agencies to exchange ideas on current challenges in social computing, behavioral modeling and prediction, and on state-of-the-art methods and best practices being adopted to tackle these challenges. Interactive events at the conference are designed to promote cross-disciplinary contact.

Social Computing harnesses the power of computational methods to study social behavior within a social context. Behavioral Cultural modeling refers to representing behavior and culture in the abstract, and is a convenient and powerful way to conduct virtual experiments and scenario analysis. Both social computing and behavioral cultural modeling are techniques designed to achieve a better understanding of complex behaviors, patterns, and associated outcomes of interest. Moreover, these approaches are inherently interdisciplinary; subsystems and system components exist at multiple levels of analysis (i.e., “cells to societies”) and across multiple disciplines, from engineering and the computational sciences to the social and health sciences.

April 1, 2014 – NodeXL SNA of social media talk at Federal Big Data Working Group

06MarMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

I will present a talk about social media network at the April 1st Federal Big Data Working Group at 6:30pm.

Talk details are on the SemanticCommunity.info site.

The Federal Big Data Working Group supports the Federal Big Data Initiative and the Federal Digital Government Strategy.

See: http://www.meetup.com/Federal-Big-Data-Working-Group/

The talk will focus on the easy to follow steps needed to create social media network maps and reports automatically from services like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, email, blogs, wikis, and the WWW. Here is a sample network map of the term #bigdataprivacy:

The graph represents a network of 248 Twitter users whose recent tweets contained “#bigdataprivacy”, or who were replied to or mentioned in those tweets. The tweets in the network were tweeted over the 6-day, 10-hour, 29-minute period from Tuesday, 25 February 2014 at 14:36 UTC to Tuesday, 04 March 2014 at 01:06 UTC. There is an edge for each “replies-to” relationship in a tweet. There is an edge for each “mentions” relationship in a tweet. There is a self-loop edge for each tweet that is not a “replies-to” or “mentions”.

The graph’s vertices were grouped by cluster using the Clauset-Newman-Moore cluster algorithm.
The graph was laid out using the Harel-Koren Fast Multiscale layout algorithm.

The edge colors are based on edge weight values. The edge widths are based on edge weight values. The edge opacities are based on edge weight values. The vertex sizes are based on followers values. The vertex opacities are based on followers values.

Top 10 Vertices, Ranked by Betweenness Centrality:
@whitehouseostp, @mit, @mit_csail, @steve_lockstep, @aureliepols, @dbarthjones, @digiphile, @stannenb, @djweitzner, @mikaelf

Top URLs in Tweet in Entire Graph:
http://web.mit.edu/bigdata-priv/webcast.html
http://www.commerce.gov/news/secretary-speeches/2014/03/03/us-secretary-commerce-penny-pritzker-delivers-remarks-mit
http://web.mit.edu/bigdata-priv/agenda.html
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/02/24/privacy-workshop-explore-big-data-opportunities-challenges
http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?mobile=1&URI=http%3A%2F%2Fmobile.nytimes.com%2F2014%2F03%2F03%2Ftechnology%2Fwhen-start-ups-dont-lock-the-doors.html
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/privacy-concerns-about-data-collection-may-lead-to-dumbing-down-smart-devices/
http://m.technologyreview.com/news/525131/intel-designs-a-safe-meeting-place-for-private-data/
http://thedatamap.org
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/140741/craig-mundie/privacy-pragmatism
http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~franklin/ecs289/2010/dwork_2008.pdf

Social media network maps and reports covered in the press

05MarMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

Coverage of our report on the six basic types of social media network structures created with the Pew Internet Research Center has been extensive. Here is a round up of the articles we have found about the study.

Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet Research Center was interviewed by Bob Garfield on OnTheMedia.

Washington Post: The six types of conversations on Twitter

San Francisco Chronicle: The six ways we interact on Twitter

RADIO WVXU Cincinnati – Ann Thompson

Fox News New York

Al Jazeera: Study maps Twitter’s information ecosystem

PBS NewsHour: Study uncovers six basic types of Twitter conversations

Des Moines Register: Twitter talk fits into 6 patterns, study finds

USAToday: Twitter talk fits into 6 patterns, study finds

NBC: Liberals, Conservatives Tweet in Partisan Bubbles, Study Says

CNET: Red state, blue state? On Twitter, never the twain shall meet

TIME: Who Are TV’s Biggest Fans? New Research Names Twitter Users With the Most Influence

Quartz: Turns out Twitter is even more politically polarized than you thought

Forbes: These Charts Show Why Political Debate On Twitter Is Pointless

Vator: Pew report: how we communicate on Twitter

Global News Canada: Study reveals six different types of conversations on Twitter

Live Science: The 6 types of Twitter conversations revealed

Seattle PI: The six ways we interact on Twitter

Associated Press: Pew maps Twitter chatter in new type of study, finds 6 types of conversations

Chicago Tribune: The 5 cliques of Twitter

Mashable: Your Twitter Conversations Fall Into One of These Six Categories

PC Magazine: Which Type of Twitter Conversationalist Are You? In a recent report, Pew Researchers explain the six regularly observed types of conversation on Twitter

NPR: Study: Conservatives And Liberals Rarely Debate On Twitter

Daily Mail: What type of tweeter are you? Researchers reveal there are just SIX types of tweet

The Diamond Back: Professor helps map social media connections

Your Social Media Conversation Is Like A Topographic Map

Media Post

Politico: How Twitter Works

University of Maryland: New Map of Twitterverse finds 6 types of networks

University of Georgia

GovTech

Wired.IT

Podcast: Social Media Clarity S01E11: Interview danah boyd about “It’s Complicated”

04FebMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

Teens and Social Media

This week features hosts Randy Farmer (@frandallfarmer) and Scott Moore (@scottmoore) interviewing danah boyd (@zephoria) about her book It’s Complicated: the social lives of networked teens, coming out February 24th and available for preorder now.

Topics in the podcast interview include:

The flawed California Eraser Button Bill
Teens creating social norms: SnapChat
Parents don’t get it: Tech replaces teens’ dwindling access to public spaces

Download this MP3

Subscribe to the Social Media Podcast:
Subscribe via iTunes
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Listen on Stitcher
Like us on Facebook

2014 INSNA Sunbelt SNA Conference: February 18-23 – St. Petersburg, Florida

03FebMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

The INSNA Sunbelt social network conference will be held February 18-23 at the TradeWinds Island Resort on the island of St. Pete Beach.

There will be NodeXL related talks at the conference.

NodeXL: Network Analysis Made Simple
Tuesday February 18, 8:00am – 11:00am & 11:30am – 2:30pm

Marc Smith, Social Media Research Foundation
CITRUS Ballroom

Twitter Conversations as Network Structures: Typology and Measurements
Saturday February 22,

Itai Himelboim, Marc Smith, Ben Shneiderman, Lee Rainie

The conference schedule is available.

I hope to see you at the conference!

StrataConf 2014 – February 11-13, Santa Clara – Network Science Made Simple: SNA for pie chart makers

03FebMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

I will present at the 2014 Strata Conference in Santa Clara, CA on February 11, 2013.

Network Science Made Simple: SNA for pie chart makers

Marc Smith (Connected Action Consulting Group)

2:20pm Wednesday, 02/12/2014

Data Science
Ballroom ABNetworks are everywhere, particularly in social media. Understanding networks can quickly reveal the key people, groups, and topics that matter most. But the tools to collect, analyze, visualize, and gain insights into connected structures have remained complex. Now the free and open NodeXL application makes network analysis tasks as easy as making a pie chart. The Network Overview Discovery and Exploration add-in for Excel (2007, 2010, 2013) extends the familiar spreadsheet, enabling users to easily access networks from a range of data sources including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, email, message boards, Wikis, blogs, and other repositories of connections. With simple automation tools, NodeXL users can calculate a range of network metrics, create a visualization, and generate a report highlighting key people, groups, and top URLs, hashtags, words and word pairs used in the discussion network. Network maps have revealed many of the hidden structures of social media, defining the major differences in the shapes and structures created as people link to one another.

I will also hold Office Hours at the event:

Office Hour with Marc Smith (Team NodeXL)

Marc Smith (Connected Action Consulting Group)
3:00pm Wednesday, 02/12/2014
Office Hour
Table A

If you have questions on social network analysis, meet with Marc to talk about:

NodeXL and related network analysis and visualization tools
How to collect, store, analyze, visualize, summarize and publish social network reports with just a few clicks (and no coding)
How to identify key influential people and subgroups within a conversation network
How to apply social network analysis to social media marketing
How to apply organizational network analysis to enterprise collaboration

Above is a map of the connections among the people who recently tweeted the term “strataconf” over the 7-day, 19-hour, 38-minute period from Sunday, 26 January 2014 at 21:53 UTC to Monday, 03 February 2014 at 17:32 UTC. The key people in the network at this point are: