The missing link between Network Science and the Social Media Monitoring industry

The missing link between Network Science and the Social Media Monitoring industry

Pablo Aragón

Eurecat | Barcelona Media

NetSci 2015 Backstage Satellite, Jun 2, Zaragoza

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Social Sciences

Computer Science

QuantitativeMethods

Traditional Empirical Research

Data Science

Skills

Computational Social Science

Usual data sources

Social Media Research Group @ Barcelona Media | Eurecat

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Social Media Monitoring

(aka. Social Listening, Online Analytics, Buzz Analysis, Social Media Measurement, Social Media Intelligence)

is the active monitoring of social media channels for information about a

company or organisation.

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Ideya Market Report, 5th edition (October 2014)

245 Major Social Media Marketing tools

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Social Media Monitoring Tools and Services Report Public Excerpts 2014

Data management featuresAlerts coverage, data export, API…

Process management and user interfaceDashboards, workflow management…

Factors influencing purchasing decisionsPricing, company size, release date…

Data analysis and visualization features

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I miss Network Analysis…

Data Analysis and Visualization features

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Dashboards of Social Media Monitoring tools


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these techniques are typical features of media analysis but ignore the social aspect

of social media.

In other words…

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Network Science

Over the last decades, the academia has deepened in the development and

refinement of network models and algorithms for a large range of goals

Node centrality

Topology (e.g. assortativity)

Community

detection

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Open-source software packages

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Tools for social scientists

Médialab (Sciences Po) Digital Methods (U. of Amsterdam)

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So…

Is this missing link between Network Science and the SMM industry not a

relevant challenge to be addressed?

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Minor and interesting exceptions

Lynguo (I. de Ingeniería del Conocimiento) Maven7 (Barabasi Lab)

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Kalium

Combine content-based dashboards and SNA techniques

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Kalium: Mobile World Congress 2015

The world's largest exhibition for the mobile industry (>400K messages on Twitter).

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Kalium: Panels

ZTE Corporation was one of the most

relevant brands on Twitter buzz...

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Kalium: Network

ZTE Corporation was mostly poked by a huge cluster of users who did not

belong to the giant component of the graph (led by the organizers of the

event, mobile providers and mass-media).

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Kalium: Bot detection

The reason behind this unexpected scenario is that the ZTE retweet-graph

community was formed by bots, a common practice hardly detected by most

SMM industrial tools.

Each tweet posted by @ztepress was retweeted by 1000 users who were finally

suspended.

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Conclusions

This basic example through KALIUM highlights the superficial level of the

analysis performed by the SMM industry ignoring Network Science

techniques.

The strength of the link between Network Science and the SMM industry will

be crucial for the social comprehension of social media.

Are you curious?

Check http://netsci2015.barcelonamedia.org

http://netsci2015.barcelonamedia.org/

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Thanks for your attention !

Data & Analytics

The missing link between Network Science and the Social Media Monitoring industry