Short sum up of the first week homework in the Social Network Analyses Course.
First, we had to download our Friends Network out of Facebook: For this the NetGet Application was used to save the Network in a GML File.
The GML File was opened in Gephi, which looked meaningless like this:
Network after importing GML file
Then I applied the Force Atlas 2 Layout Algorithm for about 20 seconds.
Network during running of the Force Atlas Layout Algorithm
To give the network some informations – represented in color and form – I was computing this methods:
- Average Degree: 30.8
- Connected Components: 26
- Average Path Length: 2.84
- Modularity: 0.459
After the computing, the visualization was completed with this settings:
- Partition -> Node: Modularity Class
- Ranking -> Nodes -> Size: Betweenness Centrality
- Adjust by Size: yes
- Repulsion Strength: 5000
- Size Mode (Text): Node Size
Network after computed and visualized Modularity Class and Betweenness Centrality
Finally, I’ve exported 4 different Layouts. The pictures below do not show all elements in the network. The original vector files with all nodes and edges are very big, so they are just linked as SVG files.
Default Curved Layout (original SVG File)
Default Straight Layout (original SVG File)
Tag Cloud Layout (original SVG File)
Text Outline Layout (original SVG File)
Ethical Question: Anonymization
An ethical question arose, when I was thinking about releasing the Facebook Friends data with names or not (as I finally did). The Network has been anonymized, cause the informations about my friends on Facebook were not given for publishing purpose, so it’s not ethically correct to do it afterwards, cause the data is there and I can see it.
Some important steps
**Update**
The GitHub repository was taken down after a request from the course managers before the second run to do it.
All the data for this exercise and upcoming ones are available on my GitHub Repository for Social Network Analyses. They are my first commits to the open source community ever, so made a very important step this weekend. There are all raw files, the gephi file, the generated images and also the reports made in gephi.
Deeper analyses will follow up. Right now getting in touch with gephi is more important. But one short note from viewing on the data with real names: Seemed, like my past and my social live was mapped pretty good, and it’s always a huge step to see something like this visually out of a data file from a social network. Amazing, but also alarming.
Thanks to Beatriz Patraca Dibildox for the tutorial, which helped me in doing some nice stuff like Modularity Class. Another nice tutorial how to visualize facebook data in different softwares (also gephi) is made from Luca Hammer at his blog.
Here’s a tutorial video in german:
And last but not least: Would love to see some other networks. Contact me, if you want to share your network anonymized or if I should do that for you.
Changes
- 2012-11-10: added Youtube Video
- 2013-05-19: added tutorial from luca