Book Review: Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL - Insights from a Connected World

The book “Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL: Insights from a Connected World” was authored by Derek L. Hansen, Ben Shneiderman, and Marc A. Smith. It was published in 2011 by Morgan Kaufmann-Elsevier, Burlington, Massachusetts, USA. The online edition of the book has a total of 284+xv pages. The ISBN of the book is 978-0-12-382229-1. For centuries, individuals have lived only in the physical world and confined themselves to the boundaries of that world. However, the advent of computers, Web, and the Internet has led to another reality - the reality of digital and virtual worlds. This transformation has extended networks beyond the limits of the physical world. The result is networked societies (Castells, 2004), networked individuals (Rainie and Wellman, 2012), social network theory (Scott, 2000), and as a new research paradigm (Bozkurt, Akgun-Ozbek, & Zawacki-Richter, 2017) social network analysis (Hansen, Shneiderman, & Smith, 2011). Almost the entire world is now connected and networks are everywhere - from biological networks to infrastructure networks; from knowledge networks to social networks. Some networks are visible, while other networks are invisible. Similarly, while some nodes and ties among them are visible, some of them invisible. Some of the networks have clear borders, while some have blurred borders making it difficult to say where one starts and one ends. A network can be a cluster or just another node within a greater network. In sum, the whole world - with all living and non-living entities - is part of a network and networks are complex structures.