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Tag: microblogging

Mar. 27: Tapping Social Media with NCapture and NVivo 12 Plus

“Tapping Social Media Data with NCapture and NVivo 12 Plus” will be offered 1:30-3:30 p.m. Friday, Mar. 27, on Zoom. This presentation provides an overview of the NCapture browser add-on (to Google Chrome and Microsoft IE) as a tool for extracting information from social media platforms and will explore how the extracted data is analyzed using NVivo 12 Plus, a qualitative and mixed methods data analysis tool. (The NVivo for Mac now enables this functionality as well.)

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The NodeXL Series: Conducting a Hashtag Network Search of Twitter (Part 5)

Sometimes, it’s interesting to learn what is being Tweeted (micro-blogged) about particular topics in real time along with who is posting which messages.  NodeXL enables the extraction of individuals engaged in a particular hashtag-labeled microblogging conversation through Twitter’s application programming interface (API).  This entry will provide an overview of how this is done.

Hashtags

A hashtag is a snippet of text prefaced with a # (hashtag or pound) sign which indicates that the message is focused on a particular theme or topic.  In Twitter, the microblogging site, various Tweeted threads are collected around hashtags for coherent 140-character conversations from people from around the world.

A hashtag search of Twitter, then, involves the extraction of entities (Twitter accounts representing people, robots, and cyborgs) who have conversed around a particular topic. The application programming interface (API) used in NodeXL only extracts hashtag searches Tweeted in the prior week and a half.

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Free, online course starts Nov. 17: Connecting with Social Media

The Information Technology Assistance Center is offering a free, online course on “Connecting with Social Media.” This five-week course begins Wednesday, Nov. 17, and is designed to introduce K-Staters to the fundamental concepts and uses of various social media tools. The course requires pre-registration.

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Spotlight: Using Twitter to stay in touch with people, issues, sites

Twitter has been all the rage since its launch in March 2006. It’s part of the so-called microblogging phenomena (also known as “micro-sharing” and “micro-updating”), which allows people to offer 140-character messages in virtually real time using this web-based interface (on their computers, laptops, or web-enabled mobile devices). The Twitter homepage may be accessed at twitter.com.

TwitterHomePage

This site shows what people are “tweeting” about down to the microsecond, for a real-time awareness of popular issues and “sentiment.” The popular sites are represented in text at the bottom part of the site, and these are clickable links to the publicly available tweets. (Monitoring tools are available to track microblog postings for company image management.)

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Managing Twitter and other social media

Where last week was an introduction to microblogging, this week is about learning some tools and strategies for managing the plethora of services and ways of communicating in this social media landscape. The immediate problem that occurs for most people who choose to engage in social media is how to choose which communities/services to get involved with and how to most seamlessly integrate them into their daily lives online. Here’s the scenario:

In real life (IRL) Joe knows Bob, Adam, and Sue. Joe’s looking to start venturing more into social media, to see what all the buzz is about. Joe created a Facebook account a while ago, but never uses it. Joe is friends with Bob on Facebook, but Adam and Sue don’t use Facebook. Joe chats with Adam on IM, but Sue and Bob don’t do IM. Joe knows Sue is a huge fan of Twitter, but Bob and Adam don’t like it one bit. Joe really just wants to connect with all of them online and it seems like such a hassle to have three different ways of communicating with them using social media.

In this common scenario, Joe is overwhelmed by it all and gives up before even getting started. While there is a lot to keep track of, it can be simplified a bit.

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Microblogging: A guide to Twitter and the rest

A little more than two years ago, a new form of communication was birthed: microblogging.

Microblogging is a short form of blogging that allows users to send brief text or multimedia updates and publish them to a private or public audience. These messages can be published via a variety of means including text messaging, instant messaging, e-mail, or the Web.

While you may not be familiar with microblogging, you have probably heard of Twitter. Twitter has become the default example of microblogging, due in large part to its popularity. Twitter is a service that started as a side project by Odeo in March 2006. Shortly after spinning off as its own company in August 2007, it quickly became apparent that there was something unique and useful about the service.

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