simplifying social network diagrams

Simplifying Social Network Visualizations

Lynn Cherny, Ph.D.

Lynn Cherny, Ghostweather R&D LLC

Why Care? Network (data) is everywhere now…

1.


A social network is a social structure made up of individuals (or organizations) called "nodes", which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige. [--Wikipedia]Postdoc at Indiana University ad:“Areas of focus will include

information diffusion patterns, epidemic models for

the spread of ideas, interactions between network traffic and structure dynamics, and agent-based models to explain the

emergence of viral bursts of attention.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_structure

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interdependency

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinship

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_network

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestige

http://cnets.indiana.edu/news/postdoc-social-networks

http://cnets.indiana.edu/news/postdoc-social-networks


And then Moritz Stefaner posted this during the summer…


How can we untangle the hairball?

Using social network analysis metrics and filtering the data set…


Tools I Used (free) R (free) Python (NetworkX) (free) Gephi (www.gephi.org) Tableau Desktop Excel Illustrator and Photoshop


Gephi – Network vis and analysis

Statistics Tab

Graph Preview

Layout Method

Color -By…

Filter Rules


Calculate Stats (Gephi and NetworkX)


Some Important Stats – Degree, Authority, Betweenness…


R – find correlations among stats


Betweenness A measure of connectedness between

(sub)components of the graph

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrality#Betweenness_centrality


Use “Degree” to scale size of node label in Gephi… still a mess! Not enough yet.


Detecting Sub-Communities-and then filtering.


Community Detection Algorithms Louvain method, implemented in both Gephi

and NetworkX

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Network_Community_Structure.png

Outputs a classification for each node in the list – 1, 2, 3… corresponding to the “community” they are closest to.


“The Authorities”

“The Researchers”


Summary You can go from a hairball to an analysis…

With free tools (plus some standards or extras to make the results pretty)

Network analysis is another form of data literacy now – think of these methods as similar to other stats, but specific to graphs.


Lynn Cherny, [email protected]

Need data help? Have a hairball? Contact me.

See my blog post on this for more info and links:http://blogger.ghostweather.com/

simplifying social network diagrams

Technology