October 22, 2010 – Connecting the Dots – A Network Visualization Symposium at Harvard

17OctMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

CONNECTING THE DOTS
A Network Visualization Symposium

http://networks.iq.harvard.edu/

Date: October 22, 2010
The first CONNECTING THE DOTS symposium on network visualization organized by Michael Barnett, Jukka-Pekka Onnela, and Samuel Arbesman of The Christakis Lab at Harvard was held on October 22, 2010.

Keynote speakers:

Alessandro Vespignani, Professor of Informatics and Computing, Indiana University, Bloomington
Ben Fry, co-developer of Processing and data visualization expert

The NodeXL project will be represented by Ben Shneiderman who will speak at 2:00 PM on:

Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL

NodeXL is the free and open add-in for Excel 2007/2010 that supports network

overview, discovery and exploration. Supported by Microsoft External Research

for 3+ years, this effort has produced a game-changing software tool that enables

students, researchers, and professional community managers to extract and

download networks from email, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, WWW, etc. Then they

can compute network analytic metrics, filter out less relevant features, apply

multiple layout algorithms, and produce compelling yet comprehensible displays

that reveal actionable insights about complex social processes.

Complete draft program for Connecting_the_Dots…

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Book: Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL: Insights from a connected world now available

13SepMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

In Stock!

The book Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL: Insights from a connected world is now available [Amazon] from Morgan-Kaufman. Co-authored by Professor Derek Hansen (College of Information Studies) and Professor Ben Shneiderman (Computer Science/Human Computer Interaction Lab) from the University of Maryland and Marc Smith from Connected Action, the book is a introduction and guide to the application of social network analysis to social media. The introductory chapters introduce the history and concepts of social network analysis an the varieties of social media, highlighting the presence of a common data structure, the network, in otherwise diverse social media systems including email, Twitter, Facebook, the WWW, Wikis, Blogs, flickr, an YouTube. The central section of the book reviews a step-by-step guide to using the key features of NodeXL, the free and open social media network analysis add-in for Excel 2007 and 2010. Readers can move from simple hand entered networks of a few nodes up to complex graphs extracted from a variety of social media services. The remainder of the book are focused chapters dedicated to analyzing the networks found within a specific social media service. These chapters were contributed by leading social media researchers and illustrate the insights that can be extracted from the otherwise disorganized stream of messages, tweets, posts, comments, links, likes, tags, friends, follows, mentions, replies and ratings. A recent article about the book can be found on the Morgan-Kaufmann website.

Table of contents…

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Paper: Tech Report at University of Maryland on EventGraphs

08JulMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

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.

Book: Flier and Cover Art – Analyzing social media networks with NodeXL: Insights from a connected world

19JunMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

The production team at Morgan-Kaufmann have created a cover and a flier for the forthcoming book:

2010 – June – NodeXL Book Flyer.

Written and edited by Derek Hansen, Ben Shneiderman and Marc Smith, the book contains contributed chapters on sample social media systems:

[Chapter 10]: Twitter: Conversation, Entertainment and Information, All in One Network!

By Vladimir Barash and Scott Golder

[Chapter 11]: Visualizing and Interpreting Facebook Networks

By Bernie Hogan

[Chapter 12]: WWW Hyperlink Networks

By Robert Ackland

[Chapter 13]: Flickr: Linking People, Photos, and Tags

By Eduarda Mendes Rodrigues and Natasa Milic-Frayling

[Chapter 14]: YouTube: Contrasting Patterns of Interaction and Prominence

By Dana Rotman and Jennifer Golbeck

[Chapter 15]: Wiki Networks: Networks of Creativity and Collaboration

By Howard T Welser, Patrick Underwood, Dan Cosley, Derek Hansen, and Laura Black

This handy poster contains many details about the book contributors, chapters, and the book cover (which you can also see below):

Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL: Insights from a Connected World

Video: Ben Shneiderman: Methods and Tools for Facilitating Social Participation

12JunMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

Ben Shneiderman spoke on June 2, 2010 at the Faculty of Management, Tel Aviv University in an event organized by UPA Israel and the Leon Recanati School of Business.

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.

May 28th, 2010 – Workshop: Government Applications of Social Media Networks and Communities, University of Maryland, Human Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL)

27MayMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

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

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May 23, 2010 – Tutorial: NodeXL and Social Media Network Analysis at ICWSM 2010

22MayMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

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.