Social media has become an indispensable communication tool giving rise to global online social networks. Analyzing social media data helps study the properties and behaviors of individuals, communities, and organizations and advance our understanding of social and cultural dynamics through the lens of modern information and communication technologies (ICTs). The knowledge thus extracted helps in harnessing business intelligence and guides decision making. The course will introduce basic social science concepts, theories, and principles relevant to guide model development, data analysis, and inference making. Data collection from social media sites using crawlers and APIs will be discussed. Interfacing the collected data with visualization and analytical tools will be taught to enable better understanding of data and extracting actionable knowledge. Specifically, social network analysis (SNA) techniques will be taught to meaningfully study the data to identify trends, leaders, and groups. These skills can be used to analyze social media data about products, services, campaigns, markets, events, customers, and employees; segment audience by geography or demographics, influencers, recommenders or detractors; and measure social media activities. Case-studies will be discussed to demonstrate the impact even the most basic analyses could afford.
Lesson plan for SNA
Social Network analysis courseFor more information, please contact Don Adjeroh, PhD, Professor and Associate Chair of LCSEE, Project Lead PI.