ITM 795 Social Media Analytics

Objectives: The goal of this assignment is to apply social network analysis (SNA) techniques to analyze social media discourse about a particular event, company, product, or service in order to:

• identify key influencers (both individual and organizational accounts), and

• determine how to use this information to improve the products/services under examination.

Main Steps:

In the report, discuss methodology (what tools did you use to create, analyze, and visualize networks from social media), results, and implications (how your results can be used to improve the products/services/campaign under examination).

Make sure to include at least 3 representative network visualizations to support your discussion of the results.

Section 1: Executive Summary (approximate length: 1 page)

1) Recap what dataset you analyzed for this assignment. What was your final search query used to collect tweets? Indicate if you re-used the dataset from A1/A2 or if you collected a new dataset for this assignment and why. 

2)  There are many methods that can be used to analyze a Twitter dataset. In the context of this assignment, explain what research questions the network analysis approach helped you answer and how you answered them. Be as specific as possible!

3) Provide information about the type(s) of communication network you examined (reply, mention, retweet and/or quote-type network) and why. How many nodes and ties were there? 

Section 2: Influential Accounts (approximate length: 2 pages)

1) List and describe Top 5 most connected accounts in your datasets based on the in-degree centrality and Top 5 most connected accounts based on the out-degree centrality.

2) For each account, provide their username, name (if available) and a short explanation (in your own words) of why they are influential in your dataset.

Section 2: Influential Accounts (approximate length: 2 pages)

1) List and describe Top 5 most connected accounts in your datasets based on the in-degree centrality and Top 5 most connected accounts based on the out-degree centrality. 

2) For each account, provide their username, name (if available) and a short explanation (in your own words) of why they are influential in your dataset.