Analysis of Social and Information Networks

Code:

PRODEI040

Acronym:

ARSI

Keywords
Classification	Keyword
OFICIAL	Intelligent Systems

Instance: 2021/2022 - 2S

Active?	Yes
Responsible unit:	Department of Informatics Engineering
Course/CS Responsible:	Doctoral Program in Informatics Engineering

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
PRODEI	11	Syllabus	1	-	6	28	162

Teaching language

Suitable for English-speaking students

Objectives

Social media services have led to the emergence of huge amounts of user-generated content in the World Wide Web, which are valuable sources of information and business intelligence. Underlying these services are rich social structures comprising millions of individuals and organizations, who interact online every day through information and media sharing. Analysis of such social structures is fundamental for understanding users behaviour and network dynamics. The first part of the course covers the fundamentals in graph theory, social network analysis and visualization. The second part addresses structural and dynamical properties observed in large scale networks. The final part of the course presents several network mining applications.

Learning outcomes and competences

At the end of the this course the students should be able to:
- explain key concepts and techniques in social network analysis;
- apply a range of techniques for characterizing network structure;
- define methodologies for analysing explicit and implicit networks in several application contexts;
- demonstrate knowledge of recent research in the area and exhibit technical writing and presentation skills.

Working method

Presencial

Program

The course is structured in three parts: (I) Introduction to Social Network Analysis, (II) Network Structure and Dynamics, and (III) Mining Social and Information Networks: Techniques and Applications.

Part I - Introduction to Social Network Analysis
1. Fundamentals of graph theory: Paths and connectivity. Distance and breadth-first search. Connected components.
2. Basic social network metrics: Degree, clustering coefficient, cohesion, density, centrality measures, clique-census.
3. Exploratory network analysis: Data collection, analysis and interactive visualization.

Part II - Network Structure and Dynamics
1. Community structure: Strength of weak ties, community detection and betweeness centrality. Homophily, selection and social influence. Modularity. Graph partitioning methods.
2. The small-world phenomenon: Clustering. Milgram's small world experiment. Structure and randomness. Small world models.
3. Power laws and preferential attachment phenomena: Popularity as a network phenomenon. Rich-get-richer models and the effect of recommendation systems.
4. Cascading behaviour in networks: Cascades and clusters. Diffusion and the role of weak ties. Knowledge, thresholds, and collective action.

Part III - Mining Social and Information Networks: Techniques and Applications
1. Social web mining case studies: Analysis of explicit and implicit user interaction networks, semantic networks, folksonomies.
2. Business intelligence: Information extraction and sentiment analysis of social media streams.
3. Influence detection and expert finding: Measures of user influence. Identification of user roles and topic experts in online communities.

Mandatory literature

David Easley and Jon Kleinberg; Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World, Cambridge University Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780521195331 (http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks-book/)
Derek L. Hansen, Ben Schneiderman, Marc A. Smith; Analyzing social media networks with NodeXL. ISBN: 78-0-12-382229-1

Complementary Bibliography

Stanley Wasserman, katherine Faust; Social network analysis. ISBN: 978-0-521-38707-1
R. A. Hanneman and M. Riddle ; Introduction to social network methods, University of California, Riverside, 2005 (http://faculty.ucr.edu/~hanneman/)

Teaching methods and learning activities

The course is composed by theoretical-practical classes, discussions, student
assignments and presentations. The student evaluation is based on the following
key components:

1) Homework assignments (HW)
2) Project + research paper (PP)
3) Oral presentation (OP)

Evaluation Type

Distributed evaluation without final exam

Assessment Components

Designation	Weight (%)
Trabalho escrito	100,00
Total:	100,00

Amount of time allocated to each course unit

Designation	Time (hours)
Elaboração de projeto	54,00
Frequência das aulas	54,00
Trabalho de investigação	54,00
Total:	162,00

Eligibility for exams

N/A

Calculation formula of final grade

The final grade (FG) is calculated as follows:

FG = 20% x HW + 70% x PP + 10% x OP

HW: Homework assignments
PP: Project + research paper
OP: Oral presentation

Special assessment (TE, DA, ...)

Students in special conditions are not required to attend the class, but will have to submit the assignments and final project on the same dates as the ordinary students. Special sessions can be arranged if needed for the final oral presentation.

Classification improvement

It is possible to improve the classification in the next edition of the course.