Social Network Analysis (Social Media)

Abstract

The study of social media networks has evolved in the last two decades into an interdisciplinary scientific area of research. Network analysis of social media data emerged toward the end of the twentieth century when, for the first time in history, immense social interactions were recorded and became available for researchers. At that point in history, decades of social science literature, theoretical and empirical, about network analysis of small and medium‐sized social (i.e., symbolic) networks intersected with a growing body of literature in hard sciences, from biology to computer science and physics, that examined much larger physical networks. Social scientists contributed the theoretical and conceptual foundations for understanding social network structures and the role of key players and communities in these communication networks, within the broader sociological, political, economic, and psychological levels, to name a few. Natural scientists introduced an understanding of the structures and dynamics of large networks (neurological, genetic, statistics, and computers, for instance) as well as the methods and algorithms required for analyzing social networks in a magnitude that had never been seen before. Network analysis of social media data is blooming within this unique intersection of social and natural sciences.