Getting started with networks

If you want to jump into your first original network analysis project, you need to first think up something that you are curious about. With social network analysis, you are often looking to build a sociogram, a visual map of how humans interact. So, for your first network project, you could ask something such as the following:

• How do the characters from <book> interact with each other?
• Do the different animals in the book Animal Farm only interact with the same type of animals? Do humans only interact with certain types of animals, or do they interact with all types of animals?
• What does the Twitterverse of my own town look like?
• What does a network visualization of ingredients to meals look like? How does this differ for different regions in the world? What does a network visualization of ingredients to region look like?
• What does the Twitter social network that exists around a certain politician look like? What does the...