Social networks are here to stay and will have increasing impact in our society and life. Through a wide variety of social network platforms, users are actively communicating with friends and strangers on a wide variety of topics; sharing all kinds of information ranging from text, photos, videos and venue check-ins; following activities of others, and commenting on each other’s posts. This ushers in a new era of communications that involves complex user relationships, and new modes of information exchanges. The ability to understand the complex exchanges in such social networks and their implications to society is thus very important.
This module aims to introduce the technical aspects of this problem, where students will learn about the techniques of analyzing the complex social relation networks between users, the contents they shared, and the ways contents and events propagate through the social networks. The analysis will provide better understanding of the concerns and interests of users, and uncover live and emerging events that will affect the community. The social network to be studied include microblogs sites like Twitter, social communication sites like Facebook, location sharing sites like 4Square, photo sharing sites like Instagram and Flicker, as well as forums and blogs.