Social network analysis of twitter use during the AERA 2017 annual conference

摘要

Social network analysis can provide insight into the educational research community as it manifests and evolves online. This study presents a social network analysis of Twitter use during the American Educational Research Association 2017 Annual Conference. The overall social network is sparse with low density, with a few very active nodes and many unconnected Twitter users. Tweets were positive or neutral and rarely negative. Degree of centrality and of closeness of the top 10 users is high, relative to the top 100 users as centrality, closeness, and betweenness taper off quickly. We interpret this as due to the large number of non-intersecting special interest groups that dilute the overall density of the network. Future social network analysis studies should compare SIGs on various metrics and track their developments over time.