About the Software (SSNA) category

A not project specific workspace for announcements, support and development for Edgeryders’ stack of custom-made semantic social network analysis (SSNA) software.

This software suite consist of the following tools:

1. Open Ethnographer

The online ethnography tool “Open Ethnographer”, which we use here on edgeryders.eu.

What’s this? Open Ethnographer is a software to add ethnographic coding right into live online content. It is an open source plug-in for Drupal, and we use it to add semantic markup to edgeryders.eu content, empowering both our ethnographic research, website visitor’s navigation and discovery, and semantic search engines. Open Ethnographer is developed by the Edgeryders LbG company, with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation.

What’s innovative? In contrast to existing QDA software, semantic markup (“coding”) is not inserted into an offline copy of the online conversation, but right into the live content. This preserves the context, enabling extended analysis later. In addition, the semantic markup can be created collaboratively, the saved coding effort allowing more detailed research later. Lastly, the semantic markup can be public, enhancing the original author’s content with semantic web integration “for free”. We believe this innovation to have potentially disruptive applications for how ethnography is done and what role it plays in societal advancement – see also our more detailed explanation.

This project is open! Which means, you are invited to browse through our project workspace below, contribute to the discussion, to software development, and of course to using the free and open source software application when it’s ready (about end of 2015-01). Core documents and tools for collaborating here:

2. Graphryder

This is an interactive dashboard to explore and analyse semantic social networks. You interact with it with the browser. Developed in the course of the OpenCare project by the University of Bordeaux and Edgeryders.

More on the Github repository

3. Edgesense

Note that we Intend to make Graphryder take over the functions of this tool in the medium term.

Edgesense is a social network analysis tool, which we use here on edgeryders.eu. It uses network analysis techniques to map relationships in online communities in near-real time – think Google Analytics, but for relationships between users. A prototype of this software has been used to perform a network analysis of the first Edgeryders community.

This project was initiated by @alberto and various collaborators – some of them Edgeryders. It has since morphed in a component of a EU project called CATALYST. Since January 2015, Edgeryders officially partners up with CATALYST to test two of their tools, Edgesense and Assembl (learn more).

4. Assembl

Note that we only tested this tool for a time – we don’t actively use or develop it right now.

A data science tool that allows you to exercise your skills as community manager, researcher or social networks enthusiast. Next to Edgesense, it is the second of the CATALYST tools that Edgeryders is testing since the start of our official partnership in January 2015 (learn more).

We want to see if they can help us better make sense of big conversations between networked citizens. The ultimate goal? Harness the knowledge into social innovation and real world impact.