Social Network Analysis: Internet Research

On August, 15-22 second International Summer School on Social Network Analysis was held in St. Petersburg. The school was organized by the Department of Sociology, the Laboratory for Internet Studies (LINIS), and the Sociology of Education and Science Laboratory (SESL) of the National Research University - Higher School of Economics. English was the course’s working language. 

The school was attended by 24 students and young scientists from Russia, Ukraine, Sweden, Austria, UK, Iran, Turkey, South Africa, Ireland and Poland. All lectures and practical courses were in English. Classes were organized in an intensive mode, each day was divided into four sections. Working language – English. 

This year was addressed how online communities can be empirically examined using social network analysis and network science. Connections between theory and application was illustrated in conjunction with contemporary examples from internet-based social networks. The course was focused on research design, online data collection, processing, analysis, and visualization. The course was also reviewed and compared the available software packages that are widely used to analyze online social networks, paying close attention to issues such as performance, user interface, and features.

The course had four components:

1. Lectures that was provided background on the field and reviewed both theory and methods;
2. Hands-on computer laboratory sessions operating primarily within the R and Python environments. These labs was offered direct, technical skills in collecting, analyzing, and visualizing “big data” from internet sources;
3. Seminars that was focused on discussing research articles;
4. Student project presentations that included a discussion of the research. Participants was received feedback from both their peers and the instructors.

Lectures, seminars and computer labs was taught by: Ilan Talmud (University of Haifa), Anatoliy Gruzd (Dalhousie University), Benjamin Lind (HSE Moscow), Alexander Hanna (U Wisconsin), Olessia Koltsova (HSE SPb), Daniel Alexandrov (HSE SPb).