COMP7025 Social Media Intelligence Assessment

Aim

The Project requires us to analyse social media data using the knowledge obtained from this unit with assistance from a computer based statistical package. For this project, we will focus on Twitter.

Method

To complete this project:

1. Read through this specification
2. Complete the data analysis required by the specification
3. Write up your analysis using your favourite word processing/typesetting program, making sure that all of the working is shown and that is it presented well.
4. Include the student declaration text on the front page of your report. Please make sure that your name and student number are clearly displayed on the front page.
5. Submit the report as a PDF by the due date.

Report Format

Once the required analysis is performed, write up the analysis as a report. Remember that the assessor will only see the report and will be marking the analysis based on your report. Therefore the report should contain a clear and concise description of the procedures carried out, the analysis of results, and any conclusions reached from the analysis.

The required analysis in this specification covers material presented in lectures and labs. Students should use the computer software R to carry out the required analysis and then present the results from the analysis in the report.

Declaration

The following declaration must be included in a clearly visible and readable place on the first page of the report.

By including this statement, I the author of this work, verify that:

• I hold a copy of this assignment that I can produce if the original is lost or damaged.
• hereby certify that no part of this assignment/product has been copied from any other student’s work or from any other source except where due acknowledgement is made in the assignment.
• No part of this assignment/product has been written/produced for us by another person except where such collaboration has been authorised by the subject lecturer/tutor concerned.
• I am aware that this work may be reproduced and submitted to plagiarism detection software programs for the purpose of detecting possible plagiarism (which may retain a copy on its database for future plagiarism checking).
• I hereby certify that I have read and understand what the School of Computing and Mathematics defines as minor and substantial breaches of misconduct as outlined in the learning guide for this unit.

Note: An examiner or lecturer/tutor has the right not to mark this project report if the above declaration has not been added to the cover of the report.

Project Description

A social and behavioral research group at Western Sydney University is studying social activists. They have consulted you to investigate the flow of information regarding environmental activist Gutenberg on Twitter. Researchers have provided a set of tasks below that need completion. The results are to be presented at the International Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC) Summit.

Perform this analysis using R with the rtweet and igraph libraries. Use the tweet documentation to find functions that will assist your analysis:

• https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/rtweet/vignettes/intro.html
• https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/rtweet/rtweet.pdf

1 Followed by Greta

Find 12 people followed by Greta that have the most followers. Use only people, not any company’s twitter handles. Examine the twitter accounts and summarise the types of people.

2 Followers of Greta

Find the 12 people who follow Greta and have the most followers and examine if they have a positive or negative relationship with Greta based on their tweets. Examine their twitter accounts and summaries the types of people.

3 Bypassing Greta

Plot the graph containing people followed by Greta and 12 followers. Identify if any of the found following or followers are friends with each other and add these edges to the graph. Then determine if any of the following and followers should be friends, based on their background, and add those edges to the graph.

4 Graph Statistics

Compute the diameter and density of the graph, and neighbourhood overlap of each edge and determine which nodes have the greatest social capital. State if the results are obvious from the graph structure and why.

5 Graph Homophily

Compute if there is homophily in the graph. To do this, label each node as either a supporter or non-supporter of Greta using the information gathered in parts 1, 2 and 3. Write out the hypotheses, the test statistic and a conclusions of the test. Use a significance level of ? = 0.05. ,/p>

6 Structural Balance

Finally, determine if the signed network is weakly balanced (using hierarchical clustering) and identify if any within or between signed relationships are not as expected. To perform this analysis, first label all existing edges as either positive or negative, based on their association to Greta.

Write up a report containing your code and analysis of the data with each section clearly labeled. Clearly annotate your code and make sure to state any conclusions you make from each piece of analysis. The report is being marked using the marking criteria, so make sure that each piece of analysis covers all of the criteria.

Remember that you are examining the relationship of twitter users to Greta, so make sure that the conclusion of each section refers back to this.