LIS 4317 Module #12 Assignment

 

This week, I explored the basics of Social Network Analysis by creating my first network visualization using RStudio and the ggnet2 package. Here’s what I learned during the process.

What Worked:
  • Installing the necessary libraries (GGally, network, sna, and ggplot2) was smooth.
  • I was able to generate a basic network and customize it by adjusting node size, color, and edge width.
What Didn’t Work:
  • At first, I forgot to convert the matrix created by rgraph() into a network object using the network() function, which caused an error in ggnet2.
  • Another issue I faced was with labeling nodes—I initially tried to use numbers instead of letters, which didn’t render appropriately until I used network.vertex.names().
Key Takeaways:
  • "ggnet2" is a powerful yet beginner-friendly tool for network visualization in R.
  • This would be useful for presenting real-world social networks like Twitter conversations or organizational structures.

R Studio Code:

# Install necessary packages (run only once)

install.packages("GGally")

install.packages("network")

install.packages("sna")

install.packages("ggplot2")

# Load libraries

library(GGally)

library(network)

library(sna)

library(ggplot2)

# Generate a random undirected network of 10 nodes

net = rgraph(10, mode = "graph", tprob = 0.5)

net = network(net, directed = FALSE)

# Label nodes as letters a–j

network.vertex.names(net) = letters[1:10]

# Basic plot

ggnet2(net)

# Customized plot

ggnet2(net, 

       node.size = 6, 

       node.color = "black", 

       edge.size = 1, 

       edge.color = "grey")

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