NodeXL Academy Summer School 2026: Learn to map social media networks in four days

If you have ever stared at a social media report full of likes and follower counts and thought “but who is actually driving this conversation,” this is the week to fix that. From August 4 to 7, 2026, the Social Media Research Foundation is running the NodeXL Summer School: four days of live, hands-on training in social network analysis, taught by people who do it for a living. A limited number of full scholarships are available, and everyone who finishes earns an advanced certification.

What the week is about

Social network analysis is the practice of looking at relationships instead of totals. Not how many followers an account has, but who replies to whom, which accounts bridge otherwise separate communities, and how a message actually moves through a crowd.

NodeXL is the tool we teach it with. It runs inside Microsoft Excel, needs no programming, and pulls data straight from X, Reddit, YouTube, Wikipedia, and more. By the end of the week you will have built and read a real network map of your own.

New this year: more data sources, and AI

Some of the data researchers most want feels out of reach, locked inside a platform with no easy way out. That is one of the things we spend real time on. This year we go past the basics and show you how to pair NodeXL with providers like Apify, which opens up hundreds of additional data sources, platforms, and feeds you may never have considered for your work.

You will leave with practical methods for collecting data across a wide range of social platforms, hands-on experience with NodeXL and its latest add-ons, and a clear picture of how AI is reshaping social media research and how to put it to work.

If you are coming back after a few years away, or picking up where you left off, you will leave caught up on what has changed. Plenty has.

What you will actually do

We keep it practical, and you work on real data from the first day.

Day one covers the ideas behind networks, gets NodeXL set up, and walks you through your first import. Day two is about metrics: degree, betweenness, closeness, and PageRank, the measures that tell you which accounts matter and why the loudest one is often not the most important. From there we move into communities, using NodeXL’s clustering to break a network into the groups hiding inside it.

The back half of the week gets into content. You will run sentiment analysis, pull the top words, hashtags, and links, and use time series to watch a conversation rise and fall. Then you turn all of that into something other people can understand: a clean, laid-out graph, a shareable map in the NodeXL Graph Gallery, or a NodeXL Pro INSIGHTS dashboard. We close with task automation, so you can rerun an entire study with a single command, and a project of your own that becomes the basis for your certification.

Who should come

The summer school is built for anyone who has relational data and no easy way to look at it. Researchers and graduate students in sociology, political science, communication, and public health use these methods constantly. So do marketers and social media managers who want to find the influencers who genuinely move their niche, communications and PR teams tracking how a message spreads, and journalists mapping online discourse. If you work with people, conversations, or connections, you will leave with a method you can use the following Monday.

The certification

Everyone who completes the program earns an advanced certification in social network analysis with NodeXL. It is proof that you can take a raw social media data set and turn it into a defensible analysis, from first import to finished map. It goes on your CV, your LinkedIn, and in front of the next client who asks what you can actually do.

Scholarships and tickets

Cost should not be the reason a capable person misses this. A limited number of full scholarships cover the entire program. If that is you, apply early, because seats are capped and applications close before the start date.
Apply for a full scholarship
If you would rather lock in your place now, tickets are available through Eventbrite.

Register on Eventbrite

Coming back after a previous year? Past attendees get a buy-one, get-one-free deal. Register one person on Eventbrite, then email nodexlacademy@gmail.com with the second name and we will handle the rest.

Scholarship application deadline: 31th July 2026. Both the scholarship spots and the paid tickets are limited, so either can fill before August.

Before you come

You do not need much to get started. NodeXL runs on Microsoft Excel, and NodeXL Basic is free to download, so you can install it and click around before day one. If you are not sure whether your background fits, or you have questions about the format, reach out through our contact page or sign up for the newsletter and we will keep you posted as the date gets closer.

See you in August.