What you see here is the network of tweets between candidates in the 2010 campaign of general elections 2010. The visualization is a directed graph of tweets from candidates, aggregated at the party level. The animated image shows the outgoing and incoming relations (i.e.the tweets to and from, out- and in-degree of sorts) by party, starting with CDA (at 3 o’clock), then proceeding clockwise. The separate graphs were produced by NodeXL, then merged into a single animated gif. I decided to layout the nodes in a circle and not use any algorithm. All attempts to create more insight using these algorithms failed, so I opted for a simple layout.

All this is produced for a paper the be presented at the WAPOR conference in September. The next step will be to do the analysis at candidate level and extend the sample to the followers of the candidates. However, I am not confident NodeXL will be able to handle this. So, I’ll move to Pajek to do the analysis.

Tweet interactions of candidates in the 2010 general elections in the Netherlands

Some time now NodeXL (free download) has been around for analysing social networks in general, but also with a strong focus on online networks (Twitter, YouTube and Flickr).

Below is just a small test – not on online networks (that’s in the works) – but on my author network.
It’s interesting to see the different groups with the network:

1. in the right uppper corner is the sociology group of collaborators;
2. in the lower right corner are local (Radboud) collaborators on local media;
3. in the lower left corner is the group of authors on Internet studies (with a special focus on the collaborators in the WCU project);
4. below (6 o’clock) are the two collaborators on watching television in a longitudinal perspective;
5. in the upper left corner ar the authors on journalism and the Internet, and political communication on the Net, with a small subgroup of authors from Belgium.

For the full list of publications that make up this author network, go to the publications page on this blog.

At a later date I will post some new graphs visualizing online politics.