Introduction to Network Analysis Tools in R

Those wishing to use the R programming language for network analysis now have a plethora of choices when it comes to libraries. In this workshop, we survey the main packages used for network data management, analysis, and visualization. We will cover 1) importing network data (from actual files), 2) network objects and attributes, 3) computing basic descriptives (attribute distribution, mixing matrix, density, degrees, betweenness, closeness), and 4) visualization (layouts, node aesthetics). These will be done side by side for the different packages, as well as discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of each. We conclude with time for attendees to work either on toy datasets or with their own data with help from instructors. This workshop is a unification of workshops “Using R and ‘igraph’ for Social Network Analysis” and “Introduction to Social Network Analysis with R and statnet” that has been offered on Sunbelt and EUSN conferences since 2011. It will serve as an introduction for those wishing to take “Moving beyond descriptives”, “Using ‘igraph’ for SNA: advanced topics”, “An introduction to ERGM with Statnet”, or other Statnet-related workshops on the program.

Because I ended-up not going to EUSN Lorien gave the workshop by herself.