Skip to main content

Social Data Analytics Tool: A Demonstrative Case Study of Methodology and Software

  • Chapter
Analyzing Social Media Data and Web Networks

Abstract

This chapter presents a methodology and software tool for the analysis of Facebook data. In particular, it describes and demonstrates the analytical framework and computational aspects of the Social Data Analytics Tool (SODATO). SODATO fetches, stores, analyses and visualises data from Facebook walls. The method has been previously applied to the US elections of 2008 (Robertson 2011; Robertson et al. 2010a, 2010b). Here, we replicate and extend the analysis to Danish elections in 2011. Our substantive research question is to measure the extent to which Facebook walls function as online public spheres. To do so, we extract the Facebook walls of three prominent candidates in the 2011 Danish general election. Our findings show overlapping online public spheres and how different types of individuals inhabit these overlapping public spheres and how they provide structure and interpretive information for others.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Calhoun, C. (1993) Habermas and the Public Sphere (MIT Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Dahlberg, L. (2001) ‘Computer-mediated Communication and the Public Sphere: A Critical Analysis’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 7, 27.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dyrby, S. and Jensen, T.B. (2012) ‘Exploring Affordances of Facebook as a Social Media Platform in Political Campaigning’, ECIS 2013 Completed Research Paper 40, http://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2013_cr/40.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fraser, N. (1992) ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy’, in C. Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge: MIT Press), pp. 109–142.

    Google Scholar 

  • Habermas, J. (1991) ‘The Public Sphere’, in C. Mukerji and M. Schudson (eds.), Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 398–404.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hardt, D. and Wulff, J. (2012) ‘What is the Meaning of 5*’s? An Investigation of the Expression and Rating of Sentiment’, Empirical Methods on Natural Language Processing: Proceedings of the Conference on Natural Language Processing, pp. 319–326.

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Reilly, T. (2005) ‘Web 2.0: compact definition’, Message posted to http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/10/web_20_compact_definition. html

    Google Scholar 

  • Robertson, S. (2011) ‘Changes in referents and emotions over time in election-related social networking dialog’, 44th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), IEEE, pp. 1–9.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robertson, S. and Vatrapu, R. (2010) ‘Digital Government’, in B. Cronin (ed.), Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, American Society for Information Science and Technology, 44 (1), pp. 317–364.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robertson, S., Vatrapu, R. and Medina, R. (2010a) ‘Off the Wall Political Discourse: Facebook use in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election’, Information Polity, 15, 11–31.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robertson, S., Vatrapu, R. and Medina, R. (2010b) ‘Online Video “Friends” Social Networking: Overlapping Online Public Spheres in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election’, Journal of Information Technology and Politics, 7, 182–201.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shirky, C. (2011) ‘The Political Power of Social Media Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change’, Foreign Affairs, 90 (1), 28–41.

    Google Scholar 

  • Takahashi, M., Fujimoto, M. and Yamasaki, N. (2003) ‘The Active Lurker: Influence of an In-house Online Community on its Outside Environment’, Proceedings of the 2003 international ACM SIGGROUP conference on Supporting group work, ACM, 1–10.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Vatrapu, R. (2013) ‘Understanding Social Business’, in K.B. Akhilesh (ed.), Emerging Dimensions of Technology Management (New Delhi: Springer), pp. 147–158.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Vatrapu, R., Robertson, S. and Dissanayake, W. (2008) ‘Are Political Weblogs Public Spheres or Partisan Spheres?’ International Reports on Socio-Informatics, 5, 7–26.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Copyright information

© 2014 Abid Hussain, Ravi Vatrapu, Daniel Hardt and Zeshan Ali Jaffari

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Hussain, A., Vatrapu, R., Hardt, D., Jaffari, Z.A. (2014). Social Data Analytics Tool: A Demonstrative Case Study of Methodology and Software. In: Cantijoch, M., Gibson, R., Ward, S. (eds) Analyzing Social Media Data and Web Networks. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137276773_5

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics