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SBS BI Workshop

Text Mining and Network Analysis
for Business and Research

SBS BI - Workshop

Leveraging the power of big data represents an opportunity for researchers and managers to reveal patterns and trends in social behaviors and consumer perceptions. This workshop shows how to successfully integrate Text Mining with Social Network Analysis for business and research. It presents the Semantic Brand Score (SBS) and other powerful methods and tools for analyzing semantic networks, studying brand/semantic importance, and performing advanced NLP tasks. The workshop also describes the functionalities of the SBS Business Intelligence App (SBS BI), designed to produce a wide range of analytics and mine textual data. We discuss several case studies and show how these methods have been used, for example, to predict tourism trends, select advertising campaign testimonials, push the energy transition or make economic, financial, and political forecasts. SBS BI analytical power extends beyond “brands”, comprising applications to study: commercial brands (e.g., Pepsi vs. Coke); products (e.g., pasta vs. pizza); personal brands (e.g., name and image of political candidates); set of words representing values (e.g., a company’s core values) or concepts related to societal trends (e.g., terms used in media communication that impact consumers’ feeling about the state of the economy). Combining text analysis with network science can change how we make decisions and manage organizations in the era of big data.

Activities and Learning Objectives

Activities
  • Presentations followed by activity learning and discussion of case studies.
  • Hands-on tutorial where participants are engaged in individual exercises/application of the App and short group work activities facilitated by the organizers.
Learning Objectives
  • Learn the basics of text mining and Natural Language Processing.
  • Measure semantic/brand importance along its three dimensions (prevalence, diversity, and connectivity) and evaluate semantic/brand image.
  • Analyze brand positioning and generate business intelligence reports.
  • Explain how techniques such as text analysis and the use of brand mapping allow marketing managers to assess how brands are positioned in the minds of consumers or other stakeholders and whether these associations are positive, negative, or neutral.
  • Discuss how business practitioners and scholars can use methods and tools of text mining and social network analysis – for example, to complement/replace traditional market sensing techniques, including consumer focus groups, surveys, and political polls.
Workshop topics include (but are not limited to)
  • Use of SBS BI for calculating semantic importance and/or brand memorability. Study of brand prevalence, diversity, and connectivity.
  • Analysis of the brand/semantic image.
  • Network topic models.
  • Keywords extraction, Named Entity Recognition, and construction of semantic networks.
  • Use of advanced lexicons and measures of text mining (sentiment, readability, informativeness and complexity, emotions, uncertainty, etc.).
  • Advanced Social Network Analysis metrics (e.g., distinctiveness centrality and rotating leadership).
  • Measures of network and text similarity.

Requirements and Materials

Requirements

Some basic knowledge of social network analysis and/or text mining is a plus if participants plan to use this for academic purposes. However, previous knowledge of these methods is not required. There are no strict software requirements as SBS BI is a web-based application, but we suggest:

  • having an advanced text editor like Notepad++ or CotEditor installed;
  • bringing your own text data, if available, and a PC.
Main Reading
Workshop Materials

Course Offerings

Instructors

Andrea Fronzetti Colladon, Francesca Grippa, and Roberto Vestrelli.

Upcoming editions
  • SUNBELT 2025. XLV International Social Networks Conference. June 23-29, Paris, France.
Past editions (selection)
  • SUNBELT 2024. XLIV International Social Networks Conference.
  • SUNBELT 2023. XLIII International Social Networks Conference.
  • SUNBELT 2022. XLII International Social Networks Conference.
  • ACM Web Science 2021. Globalisation, Inclusion and the Web in the Context of COVID.
  • Networks 2021. A joint Sunbelt and Netsci conference.

SBS BI workshops are regularly offered as part of the bachelor's degree program in Management and Artificial Intelligence at Kozminski University in Poland, as well as in three master's degree programs—Data Science, Business Management, and Economic Intelligence—at the University of Rome Tor Vergata in Italy. Additionally, the workshops are available to students enrolled in the master's program in Management and Automation Engineering at Roma Tre University in Italy.

Please submit your application directly through the conference or university websites.

Main References

More articles, case studies and scientific materials are available HERE.