CreateEgoNetwork: Create 'ego' networks from social media data

Description

This function creates 'ego' networks from social media data (currently only Instagram). The networks are igraph objects. The user provides a character vector of usernames, and the function collects data about the 'followers' of the users, with options to also collect data about who each user 'follows'. It also provides the ability to specify the 'degree' of the egonet (also sometimes known as the order), currently for 1-degree (ego + alters) or 2-degree (ego + alters + alters of alters of ego).

Usage

CreateEgoNetwork(dataSource, username, userid, verbose, degreeEgoNet,
  writeToFile, waitForRateLimit, getFollows)

Arguments

dataSource

character string, specifying which data source. Currently only "instagram" (default).

username

character vector, specifying a set of usernames who will be the 'ego' nodes for the network generation.

userid

numeric vector, specifying a set of user ids who will be the 'ego' nodes for the network generation. If usernames are already specified, this argument is ignored.

verbose

logical. If TRUE then this function will output runtime information to the console as it computes. Useful diagnostic tool for long computations. Default is FALSE.

degreeEgoNet

Numeric, the 'order' or 'degree' of the ego-network to create (1 is default). 1 = ego + alters. 2 = ego + alters + alters of alters.

writeToFile

logical. If TRUE then the network is saved to file in current working directory (GRAPHML format), with filename denoting the current date/time and the type of network.

waitForRateLimit

logical. If TRUE then it will try to observe the API rate limit by ensuring that no more than 5000 API calls are made per hour (the current rate limit). If more than 5000 calls are made within a 60 minute window, then all operates will suspen

getFollows

Logical, if TRUE (default), also collect who each 'ego' node itself follows (i.e. not just the followers of ego), and integrate these data into the ego network.

Value

An igraph graph object, with directed and weighted edges.

Details

This function creates a (weighted and directed) 'ego' network from a given set of seed users (the ego nodes).

The resulting network is an igraph graph object.

Note! The network size can become extremely large very quickly, depending on the arguments the user provides to this function. For example, specifying `degreeEgoNet=2` and `getFollows=TRUE` can generate very large networks from just a small number of ego users (even just 3 or 4 ego nodes).

Examples

Run this code

## Use your own values for myAppID and myAppSecret
  myAppID <- "123456789098765"
  myAppSecret <- "abc123abc123abc123abc123abc123ab"

  # Authenticate with the Instagram API using `AuthenticateWithInstagramAPI`
  instagram_oauth_token <- AuthenticateWithInstagramAPI(appID=app_id, appSecret=app_secret,
    useCachedToken=TRUE)

  myUsernames <- c("senjohnmccain","obama")

  g_ego_network <- CreateEgoNetwork(username=myUsernames,verbose=TRUE,degreeEgoNet=1,
    writeToFile=FALSE,waitForRateLimit=TRUE,getFollows=FALSE)

  # Description of actor network
  g_ego_network