Assignment Overview
The Network Visualization Assignment has five primary goals:
- to gain further insight into the subject matter you have been studying throughout the semester
- provide you with the opportunity to use the latest software that helps people understand social media networks by creating and reflecting on your own network visualizations;
- to use two of the primary practices associated with social media resistance: research and analysis.
- to consider how people are attempting to create or interact with social media movements through narrative, disruptive, and/or signaling capacities;
- to consider how people are engaging with a possible participatory culture and the implications of that engagement;
The assignment is informed by five Course Learning Objectives:
Objective 1. Communication Technologies
Students will develop and enhance their use of various analog and digital communication technologies for the purpose of creating media objects with specific rhetorical goals and for specific audiences.
Objective 2. Critical Awareness of the Social Role of Media
Students will understand the history and context of the role that media has played in society. Students will be able to articulate and critique the role media has historically played, and currently plays in society.
Objective 3: Effective Communication
Students will understand the principles and practices of effective media communication.
Objective 4: Reflection
Students will develop their understanding of the important role of reflection during the investigation, design, and communication process.
Objective 5: Risk-taking
Students will know what it feels like to step out of their comfort zones and take risks with their approaches to and understanding of digital media and participatory culture.
Assignment Specifics
In this assignment, students will be creating, analyzing, and reflecting on multiple network visualizations using Gephi, as well as composing analysis statements that consider the networks in terms of the readings. The processes will be very similar to the one you used to create the homework for April 25. Each of the parts should be posted to your study web page, not as a post. Use clear subheadings.
Once your archive reaches around 700,000 tweets, please stop your archive (don’t delete it, stop it). That is more than enough.
There will be one required conference with Bill as part of this assignment. Conferences will take place April 30, May 1, and May 2.
During our final exam period, Monday, 5/7, 10:30am, Bill will hold an in-class review/help session, where he will be able to help you with any question you have and read a draft of your analysis statements.
The Network Visualizations
The three parts to this portion of the assignment are designed to help you get an understanding of what is happening with tweets associated with your study topic so you can more effectively interpret them in terms of the course texts and theories.
1. In-Degree and Out-Degree Network Maps of Your Archive
Create In-Degree and Out-Degree Network Maps for at least a 1 – 3 week range of your archive using the following tutorial (which you watched for your 4/25 homework).
The 1 – 3 week range should result in an archive with a significant number of tweets (over 15,000 is a good number). If you are finding that you don’t have that many tweets, that is one thing to talk with Bill about during your conference. The key determinant will be when you calculate the Modularity in Gephi.
If your date range from the homework for 4/25 fits within these guidelines, and you are happy with them, you can use the visuals you created for homework for this part of the assignment. You can see the dates you archived and how to set the dates below:
Post large images of each of the visualizations and then discuss them in terms of the following:
- the settings you used to complete the visualization: layout system, degree range settings, and communities emerging from the Modularity statistics;
- tell the story of the visualizations; that is, what do the visualizations reveal about your archive? (300 words)
2. One or More Cohesive Subgroups
From your the In-Degree and Out-Degree network maps you used in Part 1, choose 1 or more cohesive subgroups. Post pictures of the subgroup(s) with usernames and address the following:
- Why are these users grouped together? How do they connect to the larger archive? That is, EXACTLY why and what story does that tell? (250 words for first subgroup; 100 words for each additional subgroup)
- For each subgroup you discuss beyond the first, you can receive up to 10 extra credit points.
3. Co-Hashtag Graph
Create a co-hashtag graph by following the below tutorial:
Post pictures of your co-hashtag graph, including the hashtags on the nodes, and address the following:
- Tell the story of your co-hashtag graph. That is, what do the hashtags associated with the hashtag you are studying (and the way they are grouped) reveal about the people tweeting? (250 words)
- Focus on one Modularity Community and discuss why those hashtags are grouped together. Include a close-up screenshot of that Modularity Community. (200 words)
The Analysis and Reflection Statements
After you have completed the network visualizations, please complete the following.
- How are people/accounts attempting to use Twitter as a space of resistance? In your analysis, refer to Zufekci’s discussion of narrative, disruptive, and signaling capacities. Remember, as we discussed in class on 4/17, there can be multiple, competing forms of resistance taking place, where, for example, there are people or institutions tweeting about a cause and institutions or people fighting back against that cause. If you see bot activity in your visualizations, consider the implications of those bots, as well. Make sure your statement reflects the complexity of the network and how people are tweeting. Refer directly to portions of the network visualizations and actual tweets to help support your discussion. (500 words)
- Is what we are seeing in your visualizations a representation of participatory culture, as discussed by Jenkins, Ito, and boyd? If so, how exactly? Or, have we moved on from that definition to something else entirely? If so, what would that something else be called and why? Refer to the text and the visualizations. (300 words)
- I’d like you to consider the implications of data use. How does it feel to know that anyone with the knowledge can access, archive, download, store, analyze, visualize, and use data like we have—that is, without the original authors knowing we are doing it? Do you think it is ethically or morally right for people to do so even if Twitter gives people permission? If no, why and what should be done about it? If yes, why? Avoid the reason, “Because I said okay to the terms of service.” Consider our discussions in class and the reading on social media archiving and ethics. (300 words)
Important Dates
Rough Drafts of the just the images due by your conference with Bill; Upload them to the visualizations folder in GoogleDrive Bill invites you to. Also upload the Gephi project files you saved for both the degree and cohashtag visualizations. Name your files:
- yourlastname-degree.gephi
- yourlastname-cohastag.gephi
- yourlastname-indegree.png
- yourlastname-outdegree.png
- yourlastname-subgroup.png
- yourlastname-cohashtag.png
Monday, 5/7, 10:30am: In-class review/help session (strongly recommended but not mandatory)
5/8: Final Draft due on study web site page (not post) by 11:00pm