Data Mining, SNA, Netnography
[0] Introduction How does Data Mining Work?
Online environments offer rich qualitative data consisting of A) Unsupervised Learning Technique:
conversations, messages, photographs, music clips, videos,
drawings, comments, discussions, and much more.
• Methods used in working on online Qual data are
o Data mining
o Social network analysis
o Netnography
[1] Data Mining
o Definition: is the process of discovering useful
patterns, information, or knowledge from different
sources of large among of unsupervised data.
B) Supervised Learning Technique
▪ Unsupervised = Its generation was not
carefully managed or cultivated.
o Or A process of sense making or knowledge creation,
in which mathematical operations on vast amounts of
qualitative data should render it understandable, valid,
novel, & useful. It is data driven; thus, its approach is
inductive as it begins with large datasets and tries to build
a data model that describes the data well.
o It enhances, develops, guides, & validates the
findings from more contextualizing methods such
as Netnography.
In consumer and marketing researchers, a variety of topics are of
interest that can be approached using data mining techniques.
For Ex, a researcher might be interested in the total number of mentions per
hour of a brand, such as McDonald's, on a social networking site such as Fb.
What time of day do such mentions peak? What type of person mentions
McDonald is the most? , What do those mentions say about McDonald’s?
Are they +ve or -ve? What topics are mentioned the most? What
competitors are mentioned?
• 1. Data is aggregated in a process known as
(unsupervised learning) with no pre-determined
categories or classes assigned to them.
• 2. Then, a computational algorithm must find the hidden
commonalities & regularities in the data. A key method is
clustering, in which data are organized/clustered based on
their similarities or their differences into groups.
o For example: we might cluster online mentions of the
mouthwash Listerine by whether they mention its taste, its
color, or its price.
• 1. A classifier function is learnt from data that has
previously been labeled with similar pre-defined classes or
categories. (This its definition btw).
• 2. Then the classifier function is applied to place other,
new but similar data, into those classes. Because the
existing classification supervises the process, it is known as
supervised-learning.
• Note: it is probably the most frequently used data mining
technique in practice.
Supervised learning Unsupervised learning
Classification Clustering
Known no. of classes. Unknown no. of classes.
Based on a training set. No prior knowledge
Used to “classify” future Used to “understand”
observations. /explore data
Subsets of Data Mining
• Content mining: treats data more widely, including
visual images, audio-visual files, and sound files.
• Web mining: discover useful information from Web
hyperlinks, page and web contents, usage logs', web
activity tracking, and web graphs.
• Opinion mining: it works with large amounts of
naturally occurring or unstructured data (user generated
text) present on the web.
• Advantage of Opinion mining:
o Automatically analyze mass text info.
o Attempts to measure online word of mouth.
o Attempts to measure customers feelings & emotions
(sentiment)
• Challenges of Opinion mining:
o It uses natural language processing (NLP) technique
to recognizes the information from naturally occurring
(actual) language by comparing it to predetermined
categories of sentiment, however, this task is extremely
difficult and technically challenging given the vast
number of permutations and conventions in human
language and expression, sarcasm, and idiosyncratic
spelling, etc.
Key Elements to Opinion Mining
• 1) Sentiment Classification: to determine text sentiment
(positive, negative, neutral, etc.).
• 2) Feature-based opinion mining: to discover details
about which attributes or aspects people were
communicating about. For example, in the comment 'the
screen of this tablet computer is too small' the sentiment
is negative and the comment concerns screen size.
• 3) Comparative mining, in which one object is
compared against one or more similar objects. For
example, comparison is explicit in the sentence 'The
brightness of the HP tablet screen is much better than the
brightness of the iPad'.
• 4) Assessing Passion or strength of opinions through the
recognition of adjectives and adverbs. It will require NLP
• High quality spam detection in opinion mining software
is very important to filter data before mining and to treat
spam and other noisy aspects of naturalistic opinion data.
o For Example: Sometimes people are paid to post
positive or negative reviews.
o Thus, the detection will look for content similarity,
outliers, unusuality, and suspicious spikes in ratings.
[2] Social Network Analysis (SNA)
• SNA is a technique that looks at social relationships as
networks and considers both the structure and the patterns
of their linkages.
• Social networks consist of 2 main elements:
o The social actors themselves ('nodes') and
o The relationships between them ('tie').
• SNA can be a valuable approach for researching WOM,
influence, and diffusion on the internet, and mapping and
monitoring online social networks.
Collecting data for Social Network Analysis
• We can use (social network analysis software
packages) to assist in analyzing the online social space.
o For Ex: An easy starter application is NodeXL, and a
more sophisticated one is Statnet (fully functional
network analysis application).
o Also, Mentionmapp.com is a good example of a social
network mapping software that monitor online social
network accounts.
[3] Netnography (Online Ethnography)
o Netnography is ethnography in the social spaces of online
environments.
o In Netnography, researchers view qualitative online data as
indicative of cultures or communities. It’s about immersion
in the full cultural complexity of online social worlds.
o Data collection in Netnography means learning
deeply from, and likely communicating meaningfully
with, members of an online culture or community
manifesting itself through social media. That
communication entails an active and relevant
involvement, engagement, and connection with a
community and its members.
o The act of participating changes the nature of data
collection and analysis and differentiates Netnography
techniques from other techniques such as Content
analysis or social network analysis.
Netnographic data collection involves the
gathering and creation of 3 different types of data
o Archival data: data the researcher directly copies from
pre-existing files and records or, creates himself. It is
purely 'observational' data.
o Elicited data: data the researcher co-creates alongside
social media community members. It includes researcher
postings, comments, Twitter feeds, Facebook status
updates & messages, Skype conversations, e-mail, chat, or
instant messaging interviews.
o Fieldnote data comes from the personal and research-
related descriptive and reflexive field site notes that
the researcher has created/written.
Online data Capture, Collection, and Analysis
o Netnographers have a choice between manual or automated
techniques. Both can be effective:
o Manual data collection and analysis involve saving
computer files on a hard drive and coding it. This
technique make sense when the data is kept to a
smaller size, perhaps 500 to 1,000 pages of data.
o Automated data collection is done through qualitative
data analysis software programs to assist with data
coding and organization and which can handle larger
and less focused projects. when the work seeks to
explore a major topic, or is exploratory and insight-
driven in nature, this is usually the best technique to use.
Netnography Data Collection
o A netnographer might simply use a search engine,
such as Google, to identify many messages topic
threads across many different media of interest,
including blogs and public web-page forums.

o Other websites such as Twitter, Facebook and

LinkedIn have their own search engine.

o After sites have been located, each should be

thoroughly investigated. Because Netnography is
different from data mining, a smaller subset of sites
should be considered for deeper, in-person,
investigation.