Practical workshop "Social Media Analysis for Social Science"

Title: Social Media Analysis for Social Science
Date: 16-17 October 2017, from 12-16 o’clock
Venue: room 204 (Lossi 36)

Presenters: Giovanni Boccia Artieri (University of Urbino Carlo Bo - Italy), Fabio Giglietto (University of Urbino Carlo Bo - Italy) and Luca Rossi (IT University of Copenhagen - Denmark)

Online registration is required.

Description

Overview: This workshop introduces participants to the collection and analysis of social media data with specific reference to Facebook and Twitter. The main emphasis is on understanding the logic and limits of platform’s APIs, applying social network analysis and quantitative text analysis to social media data and familiarize with the opportunities and challenges of combining quantitative and qualitative techniques. The workshop will also provide an opportunity for participants to learn how these data and techniques are being used in social science research.

Course objectives:

• Introduction to Social Media and the Challenge of Big Data/Deep Data Approach
• Introduction to Twitter and Facebook APIs, Netvizz, R and RStudio
• Collecting Facebook pages, and Twitter data using Netvizz and R
• Basic social network analysis in R/igraph
• Basic text analysis in R (building a corpus, descriptive and cluster analysis)

Course presenters:

The workshop will be facilitated by Giovanni Boccia Artieri, Fabio Giglietto and Luca Rossi.

Giovanni Boccia Artieri, Ph.D. is Full Professor at the Department of Communication and Human Studies of the University of Urbino Carlo Bo where he is Coordinator of the Ph.D program on Humanities and he also teaches Sociology of Digital Media and Internet Studies. His main research interests revolve around media theory, with a specific focus on social network society and participatory culture. Current research projects include social history of the Internet; social television; big data/deep data research methodology; social network sites as a ground to observe and study emergent social phenomena. Updated publication list and profile is available at: goo.gl/V2QzL7

Fabio Giglietto, Phd is assistant Professor at the Department of Communication and Human Studies of the University of Urbino Carlo Bo where he also teaches Social Media Analysis. His main research interests are theory of information, communication and society with a specific focus on the relationship between social systems and new technologies. On these topics he published extensively on journals such as Journal of Communication, Information, Communication and Society, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Medi and International Journal of Communication. Full and up to date list of publications and CV is available at goo.gl/V2QzL7.

Luca Rossi, PhD is Associate Professor at the Digital Design Department of the IT University of Copenhagen. He teaches Digital Media and Communication and Network Society, and he is active in the field of digital methods for social sciences. His research has always been highly interdisciplinary trying to connect traditional sociological approaches with computational approaches. He did research on online social network sites and on online information propagation dynamics during offline social events. At the same time he worked on extending social network analysis techniques for social media analysis. Within this field of research he is working on new approaches for unstructured communities detection and mapping based on the study of multiplex and multilayer networks. Updated publication list and profile is available at: https://goo.gl/PjwDsq

Prior or recommended knowledge/reading/skills:

It is preferable that participants have had some exposure to social network analysis and quantitative text analysis. Experience with R or other programming languages is also desirable, but the course includes a brief R and RStudio 'refresher'. Participants should have installed and running R, RStudio and the igraph package.