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If you are attending the CHI 2010 conference in Atlanta and are interested in social media network analysis, consider attending this tutorial:

CN03: Introduction to Social Network Analysis
Time: Monday, 12 April 2010, 11:30 to 18:00
Organizers: Marc A. Smith, C.S. Ang, Derek Hansen, Panayiotis Zaphiris
Presenters: Derek Hansen, Panayiotis Zaphiris

Benefits
This course provides an overview of Social Network Analysis (SNA) and demonstrates through theory and practical case studies how it can be used in HCI (especially computer-mediated communication and CSCW) research and practise. This topic is of particular importance due to the popularity of social networking websites (e.g. YouTube, Facebook, MySpace etc.) and social computing. As people increasingly use online communities for social interaction, new methods are needed to study these phenomena. SNA is a valuable contribution to HCI research as it gives an opportunity to rigorously study the complex patterns of online communication.

Social network theory views a network as a group of actors who are connected by a set of relationships. Actors are often people, but can also be nations, organizations, objects etc. Social Network Analysis (SNA) focuses on patterns of relations between these actors. It seeks to describe networks of relations as fully as possible. This includes teasing out the prominent patterns in such networks, tracing the flow of information through them, and discovering what effects these relations and networks have on people and organizations. It can therefore be used to study network patterns of organizations, ideas, and people that are connected via various means in an online environment.