Book Review: Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL: Insights from a Connected World
By Shalin Hai-Jew, Kansas State University
Hansen, D.L., Schneiderman, B., & Smith, M.A. (2011). Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL: Insights from a Connected World. Burlington: Elsevier.
Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel (NodeXL) is an open-source freeware tool available from Microsoft’s CodePlex site. This tool enables the automated extraction of social networks from a range of social media sites: microblogging (Twitter), content sharing (YouTube, Flickr), social networking (Facebook), email networks, blogs, wikis, WWW hyperlink networks,and others. This tool enables the analysis and visualization of some inter-communications networks, including email and the message boards of learning management systems (LMSes), virtual worlds, and gaming spaces.
The NodeXL Graph Gallery features social graphs created by various members of the global community using this tool. Derek L. Hansen, Ben Schneiderman, and Marc A. Smith’s Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL: Insights from a Connected World is a highly readable and visually appealing primer on NodeXL.
The first section provides an overview of social media analysis. The second offers a tutorial on how to use NodeXL. The third section (authored with a range of additional co-authors) spotlights the uses of NodeXL to extract and analyze information from various social media platforms. The authors targeted this to a range of users—from beginners to more sophisticated users, who may benefit from the mathematical and algorithmic insights. (Elsevier’s ScienceDirect carries an electronic copy of this text; print versions are available for purchase or rent.)
The brilliance of electronic social network analysis is that it taps into a core truism that almost every aspect of modern living involves some electronic presence and data exhaust. NodeXL offers value-added insights on individuals, communities, public sentiments, and shared digital content, with implications for a range of academic fields and research. The emphasis in this book is on pro-social uses of social media and human connectivity to each other.
The brilliance of electronic social network analysis is that it taps into a core truism that almost every aspect of modern living involves some electronic presence and data exhaust. NodeXL offers value-added insights on individuals, communities, public sentiments, and shared digital content, with implications for a range of academic fields and research. The emphasis in this book is on pro-social uses of social media and human connectivity to each other.
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