In advance of the workshop, Prof. Ackland will provide a web page with details on how to install the R package, the R scripts will be reviewed, and also information on how to get the credentials for various APIs. Participants will need to come prepared. They must have the R package installed and API credentials in hand because there will be no time for set up during the workshop.

VOSON SocialMediaLab is an R package that provides a suite of tools for collecting and constructing networks from social media data. It provides easy-to-use functions for collecting data across popular platforms (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube) and generating different types of networks for analysis.  SocialMediaLab also collects the associated text data from social media platforms (e.g. Tweets, Facebook fan page posts and comments, YouTube video comments). 

In this workshop, participants will learn how to collect various types of social media data using SocialMediaLab and generate different types of ‘ready-made’ networks for analysis. Participants will also learn basic network and text analysis using R packages such as igraph and tm.

Assumed knowledge: A basic familiarity of R (or other programming languages) and basic concepts from network and text analysis.

Resources: http://voson.anu.edu.au/SocialMediaLab, https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/SocialMediaLab/index.html

If you plan to attend, please email Janette Briceno at  j.briceno@neu.edu