Network science is a rapidly growing multidisciplinary area that allows us to understand the dynamics of interconnected systems: social, digital, physical, biological, economic, political, and others.

This workshop will provide a brief introduction to the R language for statistical computing and its use to process and analyze network data. The session will provide an overview of network formats, focusing on their structure and representation in R packages. The workshop will also cover basics of network visualization in the R environment.

Participants will learn how to calculate and interpret key graph metrics providing insight into the structure of networks. Series of examples will guide workshop attendees through the process of formatting and cleaning network data, to examining network structure, identifying influential actors and communities, and creating network graphs and diagrams.

To accommodate participants who prefer doing basic network analysis and visualization without coding, the workshop will also offer brief introductions to NodeXL (www.smrfoundation.org/nodexl) and Gephi (gephi.org).