R/CreateActorNetwork.R

In SocialMediaLab: Tools for Collecting Social Media Data and Generating Networks for Analysis

#' Note: this function is DEPRECATED and will be removed in a future release.
#' Please use the \code{Create} function
#'
#' Create 'actor' networks from social media data
#'
#' This function creates a unimodal 'actor' network from social media data
#' (i.e. from data frames of class \code{dataSource}, or for Twitter data it is
#' also possible to provide a *list* of data frames). In this actor network,
#' edges represent relationships between actors of the same type (e.g.
#' interactions between Twitter users). For example, with Twitter data an
#' interaction is defined as a 'mention' or 'reply' or 'retweet' from user i to
#' user j, given 'tweet' m. With YouTube comments, an interaction is defined as
#' a 'reply' or 'mention' from user i to user j, given 'comment' m.
#'
#' This function creates a (weighted and directed) unimodal 'actor' network
#' from a data frame of class \code{dataSource} (which are created using the
#' `CollectData` family of functions in the SocialMediaLab package), or a
#' *list* of Twitter data frames collected using \code{CollectDataTwitter}
#' function.
#'
#' The resulting network is an igraph graph object. This graph object is
#' unimodal because edges represent relationships between vertices of the same
#' type (read: 'actors'), such as replies/retweets/mentions between Twitter
#' users. Edges are directed and weighted (e.g. if user i has replied n times
#' to user j, then the weight of this directed edge equals n).
#'
#' @param x a data frame of class \code{dataSource}. For Twitter data, it is
#' also possible to provide a *list* of data frames (i.e. data frames that
#' inherit class \code{dataSource} and \code{twitter}). Only lists of Twitter
#' data frames are supported at this time. If a list of data frames is
#' provided, then the function binds these row-wise and computes over the
#' entire data set.
#' @param writeToFile logical. If \code{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.
#' @return An igraph graph object, with directed and weighted edges.
#' @note Not all data sources in SocialMediaLab can be used for creating actor
#' networks.
#'
#' Currently supported data sources are:
#'
#' - YouTube - Twitter
#'
#' Other data sources (e.g. Facebook) will be implemented in the future. The
#' user is notified if they try to create actor networks for incompatible data
#' sources.
#'
#' For Twitter data, actor networks can be created from multiple data frames
#' (i.e. datasets collected individually using CollectDataTwitter). Simply
#' create a list of the data frames that you wish to create a network from. For
#' example, \code{myList <- list(myTwitterData1, myTwitterData2,
#' myTwitterData3)}.
#' @author Timothy Graham <timothy.graham3@@uq.net.au> & Robert Ackland
#' <robert.ackland@@anu.edu.au>
#' @seealso See \code{CollectDataYoutube} and \code{CollectDataTwitter} to
#' collect data sources for creating actor networks in SocialMediaLab.
#' @keywords SNA unimodal network igraph social media
#' @examples
#'
#' \dontrun{
#'   ## This example shows how to collect YouTube comments data and create an actor network
#'
#'   # Use your own Google Developer API Key here:
#'   myApiKey <- "1234567890"
#'
#'   # Authenticate with the Google API
#'   apiKeyYoutube <- AuthenticateWithYoutubeAPI(apiKeyYoutube=myApiKey)
#'
#'   # Generate a vector of YouTube video IDs to collect data from
#'   # (or use the function `GetYoutubeVideoIDs` to automatically
#'   # generate from a plain text file of video URLs)
#'   videoIDs <- c("W2GZFeYGU3s","mL27TAJGlWc")
#'
#'   # Collect the data using function `CollectDataYoutube`
#'   myYoutubeData <- CollectDataYoutube(videoIDs,apiKeyYoutube,writeToFile=FALSE)
#'
#'   # Create an 'actor' network using the function `CreateActorNetwork`
#'   g_actor_youtube <- CreateActorNetwork(myYoutubeData)
#'
#'   # Description of actor network
#'   g_actor_youtube
#' }
#'
CreateActorNetwork <-
function(x,writeToFile)
  {
    if (missing(writeToFile)) {
      writeToFile <- FALSE # default = not write to file
    }
     UseMethod("CreateActorNetwork",x)
   }