Social network analysis

Social network analysis was introduced to us in the 6^th lecture. This analysis method becomes more and more popular and valuable with the rapid development of social network. Moreover, it involves multiple disciplines and research areas, such as data mining, knowledge management, statistical analysis, social capital, dissemination of information and so on. I remembered that one aphorism told that: “The successful of a person, it does not depend on what you know, but who you know.” I think this maxim explains that how important the relationship among people and why we do social network analysis. 

Social network analysis mainly focuses on research the relationship among a group of actors. The actors may be people, communities, organizations and even countries.  In order to analyze the social network, we learnt that how to draw graphs. In my opinion, drawing graphs is a direct way for us to find out the factors and their relationships in the network. We can intuitive see that who is the centre of the relationship network and the potential links between factors. Furthermore, we can finally build the complete relationship network which could reflect part of the social structure. We may also find out the deeper relationship between factors from the graphs. For instance:
1.       Kinship:  parent-child relationship;
2.       Emotion: like, hated, respect;

3.       Occupation: official, doctor, programmer;

4.       Common property: hobbies, organizations

Figure 1 Social network analysis graph

We can see that by analyzing the social network, we can know very detailed information of a person. I feel horrible when I realized this. We easily exposed our personal information when we enjoy using social networking services. Therefore, it is necessary to enhance our personal information protection awareness. To protect our personal information, we may do the following things: disable cookies, regularly clean the browser cache, set restricted sites, encrypt important messages and do not reveal too much personal information on internet.

Figure 2 Personal information protection

Social network analysis can help us to understand the relationship between people better. If you are also interested in this topic, please share your opinion with me.

Thoughts from lecture 4

In the 4^th lecture, we learnt sentiment analysis and opinion mining. In my opinion, this is quite an important topic, because it has great value for both individuals and organizations.

On the one hand, it could help individuals to understand what their friends thinking and feeling so that they will deepen the understanding of their friends and maintain their relationships better. In addition, we could more likely to make the right decision when we receive the influence of the others’ point of view. As we know, it is very difficult to avoid interference by others’ opinions and evaluation. In the 4^th class, Prof Rosanna shown us how strong the influence of others’ opinion. She let students who arrived early to mislead the arrived late students to give wrong answer to a question. Finally, only few students adhere to the correct answer to the end. Actually, we are so easily to be influenced by others that we really need sentiment analysis and opinion mining to judge others’ views.

Figure 1 Opinion Survey

On the other hand, for the organizations, understand people’s opinion will be beneficial to them to improve their products, services and develop their strategies. One specific thing is public opinion analysis. Public opinion is the public social and political attitude towards social events. It is integrated performance of believes, attitudes, opinions and emotions which are expressed by various social phenomena. When social media become the carrier of public opinion, public opinion has the following characteristics, higher freedom, lager information scale, faster propagation velocity, more participants and more real-time interactivity. These features bring some convenience; however, it also has some negative effects at the same time. Some rumors and incitement will cause extreme comments, irrational diatribes and personal attacks. Consequently, the improvement of sentiment analysis and opinion mining ability will probably make the social public opinion trend be grasped and guided better. I think, this is one issue and challenge faced by social media.

Figure 2 Public opinion

All above are my thoughts for sentiment analysis and opinion mining. Please feel free to leave comments and welcome to discuss and share your opinions with me.