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 24th, 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:
Here is a recent slidedeck that provides an overview of NodeXL and social media network analysis. 2009 December NodeXL Overview View more presentations from Marc Smith. The deck illustrates the use of NodeXL to extract several social media networks from…
When the late Peter Kollock and I published Communities in Cyberspace with Routledge in 1999 there were few broadband connections, no iPhones, and little WiFi. Today, there is an ebook version of the book and Amazon sells a version for the Kindle, a device it was hard to even imagine when the book was written. Google lets you browse most of it and search all of it. But the key ideas of the volume: identity, interaction, collective action and emergent order remain relevant in a wireless broadband netbook mobile social network real-time web world. The book is now ten years old.
I. Introduction
Introduction to Communities in Cyberspace, Peter Kollock and Marc Smith
“Since 1993, computer networks have grabbed enormous public attention. The major news and entertainment media have been filled with stories about the “information superhighway” and of the financial and political fortunes to be made on it. Computer sales continue to rise and more and more people are getting connected to “the Net”. Computer networks, once an obscure and arcane set of technologies used by a small elite, are now widely used and the subject of political debate, public interest, and popular culture. The “information superhighway” competes with a collection of metaphors that attempt to label and define these technologies. Others, like “cyberspace,” “the Net,” “online,” and “the web,” highlight different aspects of network technology and its meaning, role and impact. Whichever term is used, it is clear that computer networks allow people to create a range of new social spaces in which to meet and interact with one another.”
More details from the book…
The Second Conference on Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice (OD2005/DIAC-2005) was held at Stanford University May 20-22, 2005. From that event there is now a book, Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice, edited by Todd Davies and Seeta Peña…