Enabling citizen mapping of government networks with
NodeXL
Derek Hansen and Marc Smith

Patterns are left behind

Develop powerful tools, processes, and methods that dramatically lower the barriers for community managers and researchers to make sense of social media interactions.
Apply them to the government domain and national priorities.

A systematic method for understanding relationships between entities.
Vertex-Specific Metrics
• Betweenness Centrality
• Degree Centrality
• Eigenvector Centrality
• Closeness Centrality
Network-Specific Metrics
• Components
• Density

Introduction to NodeXL

NodeXL: Network Overview,
Discovery and Exploration for Excel
Leverage spreadsheet for storage of edge and vertex data http://www.codeplex.com/nodexl

Import from multiple social media network sources

Key network locations and structures:
Hub v. Spoke
Core v. Bridge
Clusters

Making Government Decisions
More Transparent

Monitoring the Masses

Teaparty

“goldman”

“global warming”

“climate change”

“smithsonian”

NSF

NodeXL map of clusters of YouTube videos discussing healthcare reform linked by shared comments. With two exceptions (the yellow cluster reflecting opponents to the
Administration health care plan, and the red cluster reflecting videos supporting the plan), most clusters do not portray contextual ties between the videos.

Improving Organizational
Communication

Supporting Community Analysts

NodeXL allows non-programmers to analyze relational data from social media. There are many applications to government including:
-Making Government Applications more
Transparent
-Monitoring the Masses
-Improving Organizational Communication
- Supporting Community Analysts

http://nodexl.codeplex.com
Forthcoming,
Sept 2010

Enabling citizen mapping of government networks with
NodeXL
Derek Hansen and Marc Smith