The purpose of this seminar is to introduce online tools that are readily available for analysing social media. The presentation will define social networks, outline the different approaches to social media analysis, and articulate the need to ensure data is analysed in context – not in the abstract. Various online resources and visualisation software applications will be introduced enabling attendees to understand the options available for their own research, publications, and presentations, as well as providing deeper understanding of tools used by others. A series of relevant examples will be given from the presenters’ own works as well as some familiar WSU community examples. If you have ever wondered how did they make that network map, analyse those tweets or interrogate those Facebook comments, then this presentation will provide some of the answers. The session will be interactive and practical – tablets, laptops and smartphones are most welcome.

1. Luigi Di Martino @luigi_dm Cecilia Hilder @CeciliaHilder
Social Media Analysis
An introduction to online tools

2. Go to the Social Media Tools Guide
goo.gl/mZSpuf

3. www.digitalmethods.net > Tools
Online tutorials: Search “Digital Methods Initiative” YouTube Channel
University of Amsterdam: Digital Methods tools

4. Research Approach
Social networks and platforms
• Twitonomy, Socioviz & Netlytic
Easy-to-use tools
• #NewWS vs #savethebird
Twitter Advanced tools
• The ICS page
Facebook Advanced tools
Structure

5. Research Approach
Social networks and platforms
• Twitonomy, Socioviz & Netlytic
Easy-to-use tools
• #NewWS vs #savethebird
Twitter Advanced tools
• The ICS page
Facebook Advanced tools

6. Approaches
Empirical
(data-centric)
Data-driven
Computational
social science
Digital
methods/humanities
Approaches to Big Data

7. Use online tools available and/or learn to code
Be aware of the mechanisms behind these tools.
Options

8. General Research Sequence
1
Research
questions
2
Platforms,
keywords or
hashtags/
pages or users
3
Data extraction
4
Data
processing
5
Data
visualisation
6
Data analysis
(with theory)
computer-assisted stages
In the case of easy-to-use tools these stages are
performed at once

9. Research Approach
Social networks and platforms
• Twitonomy, Socioviz & Netlytic
Easy-to-use tools
• #NewWS vs #savethebird
Twitter Advanced tools
• The ICS page
Facebook Advanced tools

10. A social network site is:
A networked communication platform in which
participants
(Ellison & boyd 2014:158)
1. have uniquely identifiable
profiles that consist of user-
supplied content, content
provided by others users,
and/or system provided data;
2. can publicly
articulate
connections that can
be viewed and
traversed by others;
and
3. can consume, produce,
and/or interact with
streams of user-
generated connections on
the site.

11. Understanding different platforms
Gathering data from different platforms,
structures, API and limitations.
Hashtag-search

12. Context
As of September 2014:
● 71% of online adults use Facebook
● 23% of online adults use Twitter
● 26% use Instagram
● 28% use Pinterest
● 28% use LinkedIn
Pew Research Center

13. ● 968 million daily active users on average for June 2015
● 844 million mobile daily active users on average for June 2015
● 1.49 billion monthly active users as of June 30, 2015
● 1.31 billion mobile monthly active users as of June 30, 2015
● Approximately 83.1% of Facebook daily active users are outside
the US and Canada.
newsroom.fb.com/company-info
Facebook statistics

14. Reminder: Most of the
world still isn't on Twitter
Kalev H. Leetaru gdeltproject.org

15. #G20 #OnMyAgenda pre-G20 tweets geolocation (7-13/11/2014).
Geolocation: cartodb.com

16. Research Approach
Social networks and platforms
• Twitonomy, Socioviz & Netlytic
Easy-to-use tools
• #NewWS vs #savethebird
Twitter Advanced tools
• The ICS page
Facebook Advanced tools

17. Easy to use
Free ($20 month for CSV
downloadable files)
Login via your own
Twitter account
Search for user
(@) or hashtag (#)

18. Oaktree

19. Oaktree & AYCC - Tweet history

20. SocioViz

21. SocioViz - AYCC

23. Netlytic - Oaktree & AYCC

24. Research Approach
Social networks and platforms
• Twitonomy, Socioviz & Netlytic
Easy-to-use tools
• #NewWS vs #savethebird
Twitter Advanced tools
• The ICS page
Facebook Advanced tools

25. An example: #savethebird vs #NewWS

26. ● Create an Archive of tweets.
● Let it run as long as you need.
● Download the spreadsheet.
● There are several tools for
capturing tweets. Only few
require programming skills.
● A free option for WSU staff is
Twitter Scraper by Intersect
launchpod.intersect.org.au
Extraction

27. #NewWS

28. Processing

29. Visualising relationships
Edges
Gephi is an interactive visualisation and
exploration platform for networks.
Runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
Gephi is open-source and free.
How Gephi creates relationships or edges

30. Visualisation: Networks with Gephi

31. #savethebird
#NewWS

32. @mention network
Node size = outdegree
Node darkness = indegree
Edge darkness = mentions
#NewWS

33. Numbers behind the graph
Outdegree: Numbers of mentions posted
Indegree: number of mentions sent

34. @mention network
Node size = outdegree
Node darkness = indegree
Edge darkness = mentions
#savethebird

35. Research Approach
Social networks and platforms
• Twitonomy, Socioviz & Netlytic
Easy-to-use tools
• #NewWS vs #savethebird
Twitter Advanced tools
• The ICS page
Facebook Advanced tools

36. Facebook: Netvizz
Remember to create a
research account on
Facebook.

37. Facebook: Netvizz

38. The ICS Facebook page
Posts by type Jan-Aug 2015
Data collected using Netvizz,
from January to August 2015
Extracted data from 136 posts,
with 87 users liking or commenting 391 times.

39. The ICS Facebook page
Average Engagement Jan-Aug 2015

40. Average
engagement
by type
The ICS Facebook page
Tableau Public

41. The most engaging post
The ICS Facebook page

42. Conclusion

43. Knowledge Data collection is always steeped in a specific way of
understanding the world and constrained by given material
and social conditions (Leonelli & Bezuidenhout, 2015).
The process of collecting, processing and above all
interpreting the data are stages where the researcher makes
choices that lead to a certain kind of subjectivity.
Access Skills and economic resources: Academic digital divide?
API (application programming interface)
Size No clear boundaries and demarcations of what lies in the
dataset, the so-called control zone
Ethics Consent
Traceability
Limitations

44. Final thoughts
Questions and
tools
Analyse and think
through the data
A call to engage
with social
media/analysis
Know who is
using the tools
and where

45. Luigi Di Martino @luigi_dm Cecilia Hilder @CeciliaHilder
Social Media Analysis
An introduction to online tools