July 28 – August 1, 2013 – DSST (Digital Societies and Social Technologies) Summer Institute @ University of Maryland – NodeXL Training

11JunMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

July 28 – August 1, 2013
DSST 2013 Digital Societies and Social Technologies Summer Institute: NodeXL Training
University of Maryland — College Park, Maryland USA

I will be teaching a workshop on Thursday August 1st on using NodeXL for social media network analysis at the upcoming 2013 Digital Societies and Social Technologies Summer Institute at the University of Maryland. The Institute is devoted to training researchers in methods and theory that can help frame research into the social impacts of information technology:

MOOCs, Education and learning; personal health and well-being; open innovation, eScience, and citizen science; co-production, open source, and new forms of work; cultural heritage and information access; energy management and climate change; civic hacking, engagement and government; disaster response; cybersecurity and privacy – these are just a few problem domains where effective design and robust understanding of complex sociotechnical systems is critical. To meet these challenges a trans-disciplinary community of scholars has come together from fields as wide ranging as CSCW, HCI, social computing, organization studies, information visualization, social informatics, sociology, information systems, medical informatics, computer science, ICT for development, education, learning science, journalism, and political science.

For more information about the Summer Institute, contact the Summer Institute co-coordinators, Brian Butler (bsbutler@umd.edu) and Susan Winter (sjwinter@umd.edu). For information about the broader community of researchers interested in design and study of sociotechnical systems, see: CSST (www.sociotech.net), Social Webshop (http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/webshop2012/), the “Researchers of the Socio-Technical” Facebook group, or the CSST listserv (csst@listserv.syr.edu).

Here are the slides from my talk:

2013 NodeXL Social Media Network Analysis from Marc Smith

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.

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