Reference no: EM133877405

Social Media Intelligence

Aim
The Project requires us to analyse social media data using the knowledge obtained from this unit with assistance from a computer based statistical package. For this project, we will focus on analysing data from Mastodon.

Method
To complete this project:
Read through this specification
Complete the data analysis required by the specification
Write up your analysis using your favourite word processing/typesetting program, making sure that all of the working is shown and that is it presented well.
Include the student declaration text on the front page of your report.

Project Description
The Department of Education has hired your consulting company to investigate the effect of social networks on student learning. They believe that students with strong friendship groups are more likely to obtain higher grades and so they want you to investigate the structure of a student social network.
Perform this analysis using R with the rtoot and igraph libraries. Use the rtoot documentation to find functions that will assist your analysis:

Gathering the Users
Use the rtoot library in R to connect to the Mastodon API and download the set of toots that contain the hashtag #WSUCOMP7025. Write the code to use the downloaded data to provide a table showing each server (e.g. mastodon.social) and the count of the number of toots containing #WSUCOMP7025 provided by that server.

Following Graph
For each toot author obtained, download the details of the accounts that they follow and write the code to create a directed graph showing each author as a node and the edges showing who follows who. Compute the number of components in the graph and the size of each component. Plot the largest component of the graph (do your best to make it visually appealing). Comment on the structure of the graph.
For the remainder of the project, we will only use the largest component of the graph.

Graph Statistics
Compute and report the diameter and density of the graph. Plot the in-degree distribution of the graph and estimate the Power Law coefficient (c) from the in-degree distribution. Briefly explain what the value of this coefficient reveals about the graph.

Investigating Homophily
The Department of Education believe that people who have lunch in the same location will have similar preferences. Use the data provided with the project specification to determine if the subgraph of people exhibits homophily.

Account Popularity
The popularity of each Mastodon account can be measured using PageRank. Measure the popularity of each Mastodon account using the Scaled PageRank algorithm, with α = 0.85. Report the ten most popular accounts and their PageRank score, and compare the results to the in-degree of each vertex. Hire best assignment help and experienced tutors now!

Account Selection
The Department of Education want to develop strategies for new students to join social groups. They want new students to visit the East and West side of the campus, but they need a strategy to maximise their chances.

A set of factors were taken into account to provide the following payoff matrix. The columns show the side chosen by one new student and the rows show the side chosen by the other. The payoffs are the chance that each joins a social group.

                                           Student 2

                                   East                            West
Student 1      East          0.6, 0.4                       0.2, 0.8
                   West         0.3, 0.9                       0.7, 0.4

Given that the two students can't communicate, provide the best strategy for them and provide the expected chance of joining a social group for the found strategy.

Write up a report containing your code and analysis of the data with each section clearly labelled. Clearly annotate your code and make sure to state any conclusions you make from each piece of analysis. The report is being marked using the marking criteria, so make sure that each piece of analysis covers all of the criteria.

Remember that you are examining the structure of a student social network for the Department of Education, so make sure that the conclusion of each section refers back to this.

Report Format

Once the required analysis is performed, write up the analysis as a report. Remember that the assessor will only see the report and will be marking the analysis based on your report. Therefore the report should contain a clear and concise description of the procedures carried out, the analysis of results, and any conclusions reached from the analysis.

The required analysis in this specification covers material presented in lectures and labs. Students should use the computer software R to carry out the required analysis and then present the results from the analysis in the report.