Research Summaries

Back CORE Lab SNA & Social Media Fusion Curriculum – SOCOM

Fiscal Year 2018
Division Graduate School of Operational & Information Sciences
Department Defense Analysis
Investigator(s) Everton, Sean F.
Sponsor U.S. Special Operations Command (Joint)
Summary The Common Operational Research Environment (CORE) Lab’s Social Network Analysis (SNA) and Social Media Fusion educational outreach supports analysts and practitioners by introducing a basic understanding of SNA theory and techniques within the context of social media. SNA is a quantitative analysis rooted in multi-disciplinary social science theory that essentially provides a method for mapping out human networks by analyzing patterns of interactions, from which analysts can determine network structure and its weaknesses, identify flows of information and resources, and identify key actors within the network. By applying this analytical methodology to social media data, analysts will gain an ability to quickly identify “communities” of individuals based on degrees of interaction, drill down to key individuals who occupy strategic positions in the network, and understand network-level measures for which to derive measures of effectiveness if the network is changed. Most importantly, students are taught the “why” as well as the “how” during this course, so they may best apply their critical thinking skills and tacit subject matter expertise to their networks.
This curriculum has two basic objectives. The first objective is for USSOCOM participants to develop an understanding of basic SNA theory and techniques. The second is to provide hands-on experience using real world social media data and applying SNA methodology using specialized software. Social media data is increasingly gaining attention within intelligence, defense, and law enforcement agencies as a potential source of timely and easily-accessible information from on-the-ground sources. This educational outreach provides hands-on experience using a series of labs and practical exercises on the software package Gephi to provide a method for managing and making sense of the social media “big data” problem. It is highly encouraged for students to bring with them a real-world problem or data set they are currently working so that they may apply this process to a context they know well.
Keywords
Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal