Sunday, October 18, 2015

Data for tweets with #VaccinesWork is represented graphically through NodeXL

Network graph of Twitter hashtag  #VaccinesWork
The computer program NodeXL is able to analyze a group of tweets and plot visual connections of that analyzed network. The network graph shown on the right displays the activity of Twitter users who included the hashtag #VaccinesWork in their tweets.  This data represents the interaction of 3,344 Twitter users between the dates of September 19, 2015 and October 5, 2015.  On the graph, the curved line connections represent a "replies-to" or a "mentions" relationship between tweets and a loop represents a tweet that has neither a "reply-to" nor a "mention."  The title for each sub-graph section represents the most used words in the tweets of that section.

The hashtag #VaccinesWork stems from VaccinesWork.org, which is a blogging site that touches on subjects regarding vaccinations and the challenges associated with receiving them.  The blogs are written by  Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.

My thoughts as I was taking my first look at the network graph was that it was difficult to comprehend, based on the tiny sized attributes and the complexity of the graph.  I initially did not understand what the titles of each sub-graph represented.  I also could not clearly make out each connection between each sub-graph and its contributors.  This graph is very cluttered and all of the information is not fully presented either.

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