Social Media Network Research Winter School 2025

The Social Media Research Foundation’s 5th annual Winter School is an intensive 5-day online event around social media research and social network analysis using NodeXL.

Join us for expert talks, tutorials and one-on-one sessions with our instructors from Team NodeXL. Learn tips and tricks to collect, analyze, visualize, report and present insights into social media networks with no previous knowledge required.

Gain network knowledge to boost your research project with network data and expert knowledge. Many previous students have gone on to publish studies in international peer-reviewed journal articles and conferences around the world.

If you can make a pie chart, you can now make a network chart!

The event ticket includes access to all sessions (video-recorded), a 60-day NodeXL Pro user license and two one-on-one meetings with our instructors. All sessions will be delivered online via Zoom. Attendees will receive a meeting link 7-days before the workshop. On completion, delegates will be emailed a certificate of attendance (PDF).

Event Schedule

Starting time each day is at 2 pm GMT. The sessions end around 6:30 pm GMT. A detailed timetable with all sessions will be provided to attendees before the event:

Pre-Event Task: View a short onboarding video (optional for those at an advanced level). If you are completely new to NodeXL please make use of the pre-meeting option so we can get you onboarded before the event.

Day 1: January 6, 2025: Introduction Day - Introduction to social media research, networks and NodeXL

Day 2: January 7, 2025: Tutorial Day 1: Learn how to master NodeXL and analyze various networks - X, Reddit, Flickr, YouTube, Instagram, Tiktok

Day 3: January 8, 2025: Tutorial Day 2: More NodeXL, Gephi and other tools

Day 4: January 9, 2025: Support Day: 1-on-1 sessions and practical help

Day 5: January 10, 2025: Presentation Day: Learn how to write a paper / project presentations / discussion

Course Syllabus

This event will introduce the importance of social media research & provide an overview of NodeXL Pro for analysing social media data. NodeXL provides easy access to social media network data streams, advanced network metrics, text and sentiment analysis, and powerful report generation with just a few clicks.

Gain insights into collections of annotated connections. Discover the key people leading each topic discussed in social media. Identify groups, factions, divisions and market segments in a discussion stream. Learn to "Think Link" and gain insights into collections of connections found in social media and beyond!

The need to gain insights into social media has grown in importance with the increasing popularity of social networking websites in particular and social computing in general. As people increasingly participate in online communities for social, commercial, and civic interaction, new methods are needed to study these phenomena.

The event will be led by Dr. Marc Smith from the Social Media Research Foundation with guest speakers who will demonstrate network methods for research insights. Members of Team NodeXL will also provide a variety of tutorials on how to use NodeXL.

Learning Outcomes

- Learn the required theories and concepts of networks and social networks

- Learn how to prepare your data for network analysis

- Learn the basics of the NodeXL Pro application

- Learn how to do automated analysis in NodeXL Pro

- Learn to identify key people and groups on social networks

- Learn how to run content analysis to create a vector of words, hashtags and URLs for each users, group, and population

- To understand how to interpret the network metrics and shapes

Who will benefit from this course?

This event will benefit a wide range of people including, but not limited to:

* Academics/ Researchers

* Masters and PhD students

* Research Support Staff and Managers

* Communications and Marketing Professionals

* Entrepreneurs

Scholarship competition

We provide a scholarship competition for students, and the link to apply can be found though this ---> link

Previous Attendee Feedback

"The Summer School provides relevant practical lessons for starting your social media data analysis journey and the instructors are keen on adapting on your specific interests and research needs"

"An extremely dedicated team of experts who are determined to share and teach you how to do SNA!"

"If you love social media and understand its perks and value, the course allow you to star the path to become an expert of social media analysis"

Event Venue

Online