by On January 27 we ran the class discussion through the Twitter hashtag, #SOJCssm.
During this class, we discussed network analysis. We focused mainly on social network analysis. The main points for why this topic should be talked about is to: 1) Identify influential people, 2)understand product recommendations, and 3) understand the content and campaign propagation. Another big takeaway is that strong and frequent connections are very important. Who you know definitely matters.
Doing a network analysis is important for brands because it shows the brand who its influencers, discussion leaders and decision-makers are. Everyone has a network that they are attached to, so it is important for brands to know and understand which network they are targeting and how to best reach them. One way brands can see the networks and discussions that surround it is through a website called Netlytic. Netlytic displays the hubs of discussion, so brands can easily see their engagement.
In terms of Twitter, we posted tweets regarding the content of the lecture, but those did not seem to get too much engagement.
When we posted tweets that people could relate to, or directly asked the user to do something, we saw that students were more likely to engage with the content we put out.
Some important definitions from this class are:
diameter: largest distance in the network
reciprocity: the likelihood of edges in a directed network to be mutually linked
degree centrality: risk of node catching whatever is flowing through a network
These definitions are important in talking about and understanding social network analysis graphs.
| role | betweenness | degree | characteristics |
| gatekeepers | high | low | important role activity removal may fragment the network |
| highly visible | low | high | may have info about others in the network lots of activity but no unique role |
| central figures | high | high | very visible |
Here’s a Star Wars example of network analysis.
