Dear List, My short course on social media analysis is scheduled to run at the ACSPRI Summer Program <https://www.acspri.org.au/summerprogram2015>, University of Melbourne, 9-13 February 2015. This course will provide students with an introduction to social media analysis in the context of social research. The course is designed for social researchers interested in social media, and covers methods of accessing and analysing digital trace data from websites, blogsites, Twitter and Facebook. While there is emphasis on social networks (e.g. WWW hyperlink networks, follower networks in Twitter, friendship networks in Facebook), analysing text content from social media is also covered. There will also be an introduction to using Virtual Worlds (e.g. Second Life and Massively Multiplayer Online Games) and online experiments for social research. Analytic approaches include social network analysis and text content analysis. The course also provides practical training in three software tools that can be used for social research using social media data: VOSON (for hyperlink network construction and analysis), NodeXL (an Excel 2007/2010 template for collecting and analysing social media data) and Gephi (for network visualisation). You can register for the course here: https://www.acspri.org.au/node/1422 Note that the cutoff date for the early bird rate is 19th November. The following page provides some more information on the course, including draft program, example NodeXL/Twitter exercise and associated screencast: http://voson.anu.edu.au/social-media-analysis-2015 -- Assoc. Prof. Robert Ackland VOSON Lab and Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute Australian National University New book: Web Social Science: Concepts, Data and Tools for Social Scientists in the Digital Age <http://www.amazon.com/Web-Social-Science-Concepts-Scientists/dp/1849204810> (SAGE Publications) homepage: https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/ackland-rj project: http://voson.anu.edu.au <http://voson.anu.edu.au/>