Social Media Analytics: Using Data to Understand Public Conversations (FutureLearn)

Social Media Analytics: Using Data to Understand Public Conversations (FutureLearn)

How can you discover what’s being said about the things that matter to you on social media platforms, including Twitter? What are tweets and the cultural politics of Twitter? Learn to use TAGS and discuss the implications of accessing social media data. What are the pros and cons of analysing social media data in real time? Learn how to use Tableau to analyse data, identify trends and patterns and explore how social media have been used in times of crisis and during political campaigns.

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Use Gephi to visualise data networks, discuss the benefits of using digital tools to analyse social media data and consider how such analyses may be supported by other methods.

What topics will you cover?

  • The role and structures of social media conversations
  • Methods for and implications of gathering data
  • Key metrics used for analysing Twitter
  • Methods for identifying trends in social data
  • The theory of social networks
  • Methods for creating and interpreting data visualisations

What will you achieve?
By the end of the course, you'll be able to...

  • Access social media data and understand the ethical implications of doing this
  • Apply digital methods to recognise and explain the significance of patterns in social data
  • Create data visualisations and use them to identify features of social networks
  • Draw personally relevant conclusions about social media that apply beyond the course
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