The bulk of my research involves some degree of 'Big Data' -- such as datasets with a million or more tweets. Getting these data prepped for analysis can involve massive amounts of data manipulation -- anything from aggregating data to the daily or organizational level, to merging in additional variables, to generating data required for social network analysis. For all such … [Read More...]
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Downloading Tweets, Take III – MongoDB
In this tutorial I walk you through how to use Python and MongoDB to download tweets from a list of Twitter users. This tutorial builds on several recents posts … [Read More...]
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Does Twitter Matter?
Twitter is not the Gutenberg Press. The 'Big Data' revolution is over-hyped. Nevertheless, Twitter is significant in a number of ways: For identifying … [Read More...]
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Establishing a Presence: Advice for PhD Students
Being Director of Graduate Studies gives me plenty of time to reflect on what I'd like students to get out of graduate education. For budding academics, you have all likely heard (countless times!) that the ultimate "deliverable" is high-quality journal … [Read More...]
Why I Use Python for Academic Research
Academics and other researchers have to choose from a variety of research skills. Most social scientists do not add computer programming into their skill set. As a strong proponent of the value of learning a programming language, I will lay out how this has … [Read More...]
How Organizations Use Social Media: Engaging the Public
The research I've done on organizations' use of social media suggests there are three main types of messages that organizations send on social media: informational, community-building, and "action" (promotional & mobilizational) messages. Each type … [Read More...]