A set of slides for a talk provided to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Government Offices in London, August 4th 2016. No social media data was captured and/or analysed by myself in the production of the slides.

1. Social Media Analytics
Wasim Ahmed (wahmed1@Sheffield.ac.uk)
(Twitter: @was3210)
Department for Work and Pensions
Social Media Research Seminars.
4th August 2016, London.

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About me
• Second Year PhD student in the Health
Informatics Research Group, Information
School, University of Sheffield.
• Research Associate (Social Media Specialist),
Management School, University of Sheffield.
• Visibrain Blog Partner, Connected Action
Partner, Echosec Advisor, SMRF Member, and
NSMNSS member.

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PhD Background
• PhD project examines infectious disease
outbreaks on Twitter (Ebola and Swine Flu).
• PhD contains a chapter on tools, methods and
software of capturing and analysing Twitter data.
• Published articles on social media software on
my research blog, on the LSE Impact blog, and
for the MmIT journal.

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Overview
• Part 1 – Outlines Twitter as a platform,
and the popularity of Twitter research, and
some methods of analysis.
• Part 2 – Examines tools available for real
time social media analysis.

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Part 1
Part 1 of the seminar will outline:
• Twitter as a platform
• Popularity of Twitter
• Brand Awareness
• Methods of analysis

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Twitter
• Twitter allows brief <140 character text
updates, know as ‘tweets’, to be shared with
other users as well as images, videos, and
links.
• Tweets can contain thoughts, feelings,
activities, and opinions (Chew and
Eysenbach, 2010).

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Popularity of Twitter
• Twitter is the most popular platform in regards
to academic research and for companies
producing social media analytics.
• Why is Twitter so popular?

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Popularity of Twitter
• Twitter is a popular platform in terms of the
media attention it receives and it therefore
attracts more research due to its cultural
status.
• Twitter makes it easier to find and follow
conversations (i.e., by both its search feature
and by tweets appearing in Google search
results).

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Popularity of Twitter
• Twitter has hashtags which make it easier
gathering, sorting, and expanding searches
when collecting data.
• Therefore Twitter data is easy to retrieve as
major incidents, news stories and events on
Twitter tend to be centred around a hashtag.
e.g..#Brexit

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Popularity of Twitter
• The Twitter API is more open and accessible
compared to other social media platforms, which
makes Twitter more favourable to developers creating
tools to access data. This consequently increases
the availability of tools to researchers.
• Many researchers themselves are using Twitter and
because of their favourable personal experiences,
they feel more comfortable with researching a familiar
platform.

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Why are these applications
important?
• When it became clear that Twitter was
becoming an important social networking
site and public communication platform a
number of businesses and social media
marketing professionals attempted to
exploit the platform for commercial
purposes

12. Toyota
• Toyota had to recall a number of its cars in
2009 and 2010 due to a serious safety
fault which resulted in the deaths of over
50 people
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13. • As soon as the recall crisis start getting
media attention Toyota quickly put
together an ‘Online Newsroom’ and a
‘Social Media Strategy Team’ to
coordinate all the media releases
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Toyota

14. Sony PlayStation Network
• In mid-April 2011 the Playstation Network was
suddenly shut down without explanation
• Frustrations quickly spread through social media
sites such as Twitter as gamers around the
world voiced their annoyance at not being able
to access their online games
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15. Sony PlayStation Network
• The lack of regular updates and
information from Sony served to incense
users
• Users struggled to determine what was
fact and what was rumour on Twitter
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16. • “I think It is pretty disgusting that Sony have waiting 7
days to tell users that their Credit Card details may have
been compromised”.
• “I bet the hacker will get emails out quicker than Sony!”
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Sony PlayStation Network

17. Toyota
• While there was still anger and negative
viewpoints shared through social media
services,
• Company was able to minimise their
impact by eliminating confusion and
keeping the consumer base regularly
informed of developments
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18. Brand Management
• The two cases have highlighted brands
need to know how they are being
mentioned across social media profiles
• Social Media Analytics is now a huge
market
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API
• An API in simple terms is a set of requirements which
dictate how one application may talk to another
• On the web APIs allow services such as Google maps
or Facebook let other application ‘piggyback’ on their
services
• APIs allow outside programs to access specific sets of
features thus saving developers time and resources
i.e., accessing data
See http://readwrite.com/2013/09/19/api-defined/

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Different types of API
• Application Programming Interface: Three types of
Twitter API i) Search, ii) Stream, and iii) Firehose
• i) Twitter’s Search API – similar to the search function
in Twitter. It is focused on relevance and not
completeness, some tweets and users may be
missing from results (possible to go back in time 7
days from the query date up to 3200 queries)

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Different types of API
• Application Programming Interface: Three types of
Twitter API i) Search, ii) Stream, and iii) Firehose
• ii) Twitter’s Streaming API – Streaming APIs give
developers low latency access to Twitter’s global
stream of tweet data (a type of ‘live’ stream)

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Different types of API
• Application Programming Interface: Three types of
Twitter API i) Search, ii) Stream, and iii) Firehose
• iii) Firehose API – in theory, 100% of Twitter data
(most software allows up to 30 days worth of
historical tweets)

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Legality
• Sharing Twitter datasets is prohibited under
Twitter’s terms and conditions see:
https://dev.twitter.com/overview/terms/agreeme
nt-and-policy
• However, sharing Tweet IDs (to look up the
tweets that are used is permissible).

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Examples of Methods Used to
Analyse Twitter Data
• Sentiment analysis has the potential to work
well with Twitter data, as tweets are short (i.e.,
<=140 characters)
• However, sarcasm is difficult to detect within
tweets.
• See the SentiStrength algorithm
(http://sentistrength.wlv.ac.uk/)

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Types of Analysis
• Time series analysis can be used to
examine tweets overtime and to see
when a peak in tweets may occur or have
occurred.

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See Example of DWP

27. Types of Analysis
• Network analysis is used to visualize the
connections between users and visually
display the connections
• Network analysis can also be used to
cluster Twitter users into different groups
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28. Types of Analysis
• Machine Learning
• Example: Manually coding a subset of
data e.g., 100 tweets in a dataset of a
1,000 where the algorithm will
automatically classify the remaining data.
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29. Types of Analysis
• Content Analysis/Thematic Analysis
• Example: Manually placing tweets into
predefined categories and/or exploring
tweets and developing categories.
• Use Microsoft Excel/NVivo
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30. Part 2
• Part 2 of the seminar will provide an
overview of some of the most popular
social media analysis and analytical
software available to the public.
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31. Visibrain
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32. Visibrain
• Visibrain is a powerful media monitoring
tool which has access to the Twitter
Firehose
• Therefore, it is not limited in the amount
that can be retrieved unlike
the Search and Stream APIs.
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33. Visibrain
• Explore and filter tweets, links, users,
hashtags, expressions, mentions,
countries, languages, genders,
audiences, occupations, interests,
client types, content types, and
domains.
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34. Possible uses
• Security teams, organisations, and/or
government
• For example you could monitor
Twitter/social media for mention of a bank
and a hacking group and/or a city and
‘attack’
• If triggered you would receive an alert
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35. Visibrain
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36. Visibrain
• Receive reports produced and delivered
almost instantly displaying tweet content,
actors, URLS, and so forth.
• Possible to receive these alerts via email
to almost any location in the world.
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37. Visibrain
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38. Echosec
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39. Echosec
• Many citizens now carry mobile devices
connected to the Internet capable of
taking video and pictures
• Emerging news stories of crisis events
may be reported on social media before
reported anywhere else. These posts may
contain location information.
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40. Echosec
• For example, those whom are affected by
a flood may post information and media
with location information such as video
or pictures to social media which can then
be utilized by the emergency services
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41. Echosec
• Echosec has removed the difficulty of
identifying relevant content by providing
the ability to search for locations as well
as content
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42. Echosec
• Echosec allows you to navigate to almost
any location in the world and examine the
social media activity around that area
• Currently Echosec Pro allows users to
access at least the following social data
feeds: Instagram, Twitter, Foursquare, AIS
Shipping, Sina Weibo, Flickr, YouTube,
VK, and Panoramio
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43. Possible uses of Echosec
• Crisis events:
• Floods
• Earthquakes
• Situational awareness:
• Concerts
• Sports events
• Security Teams:
• Government security teams/ Local Authorities
• Private Investigators
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44. Possible uses of Echosec
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• Geographically searching social media
data in an area can show you what you
are looking for in an emergency
• Can examine locations of affected areas
and see where people have stopped
posting from

45. Possible Use Case
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• Security services e.g., NSA examining
content shared from building premises for
security breaches
• Echosec has found cases of employees
working within secure buildings to be
taking selfies with their ID badges

46. Dashboard layout of Echosec
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47. NodeXL
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48. NodeXL
• Social media analysis that looks at the
structure of networks
• Produces analytics such as most
frequently occurring URLs, domains,
hashtags, keywords, overall and by group
level.
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49. NodeXL
• Social media analysis that looks at the
structure of networks
• Produces analytics such as most
frequently occurring URLs, domains,
hashtags, keywords, overall and by group
level.
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50. NodeXL
• Essentially NodeXL allows you to take
pictures of crowds
• Graph Gallery – a “Flickr for network
graphs” – Marc Smith (Social Media
research foundation)
• DWP network graph by Connected Action
Consulting Group
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51. NodeXL
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52. NodeXL – 6 types of network structures
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53. NodeXL – 6 types of network
structures
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NodeXL

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NodeXL interactive graph

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NodeXL G1
MP for Ashford. Secretary
of State for Work and
Pensions.

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NodeXL G2
DWP Twitter account

58. NodeXL
• [640] Words in Sentiment List#1: Positive
• [1544] Words in Sentiment List#2: Negative
• [4] Words in Sentiment List#3: Angry/Violent
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59. NodeXL
• Top Word Pairs in Tweet in Entire Graph:
[325] phone,lines
[319] lines,dwp
[214] scrap,rip
[196] rip,phone
[169] expensive,phone
[169] ministry,labour
[159] calls,dwp
[139] scrap,dwp
[137] dwp,minister
[128] new,dwp
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60. NodeXL
• [160] Social Security Advisory Committee, Telephony in DWP and HMRC:
an update
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/5
38834/telephony-in-dwp-and-hmrc-an-update-op17.pdf
•
[68] Benefit sanctions handed out to thousands of people ‘unlawful’
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/dwp-defeated-in-court-again-
over-unlawful-retroactive-benefit-sanctions-a7006466.html
•
[32] Make all calls to the department for work and pensions free
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/make-ian-duncan-smith-make-all-phone-
communication-free?bucket=blast&source=twitter-share-button
•
[27] Owen Smith vows to scrap the DWP as ‘cold-eyed revolution’ in
Labour leadership speech http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/owen-smith-
labour-leadership-revolution-8502537
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61. NodeXL
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• Although the graph gallery contains a
number of network graphs from Twitter - it
is possible to import networks from other
social media platforms such as Facebook
and Instagram

62. DiscoverText
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DiscoverText
• Useful for machine learning, de-
duplication, and collaboration.
• Used with Sifter, it is possible to retrieve
data going back in time more than 30 days
• Data cost will range from not that
expensive to very expensive depending
on the query and time

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DiscoverText
• University of Sheffield Project
• Analysed the mentions of the University
over a 1 year period and classified tweets
• Better understand who engages with the
University on Twitter

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Conclusion
• There is no best social media analytics or
analysis software – each offers something
different.
• I tend to use a number of software in
combination to gain the best insight.
• Thanks for listening.

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Questions?

67. To
Discover
And
Understand.