This course deals with computer science (CS) aspects of social network analysis (SNA), and is open to all students in the master computer science programme at Leiden University.


Course information

Lectures: Fridays from 9:00 to 10:45 in Gorlaeus lecture room BM1.33
Lab sessions: Fridays from 11:00 to 12:45 in Gorlaeus lab room DM0.09 and DM0.17
Prerequisites: a CS bachelor with courses on Algorithms, Data Structures and Data Mining
Literature: provided papers and book chapters (free and digitally available)
Examination: based on presentation, paper, programming, peer review and participation (no exam)
Brightspace link: 2526-S1 Social Network Analysis for Computer Scientists
Study guide link: Social Network Analysis for Computer Scientists
Study points: 6 ECTS

Course staff: dr. Frank Takes (f.w.takes@liacs.leidenuniv.nl, room BE 3.07), Rachel de Jong MSc (room BE 3.03)
Assistants: Gamal Adel Elgamal MSc (room BE 2.23), Bart Holterman, Thanos Kalligeris and Bart Westhoff

Need help? Ask your questions during the lab sessions. If it is more urgent, walk by the lecturer or assistant's offices. If they are not around, contact snacs@liacs.leidenuniv.nl.


[Network visualization image]

Network with 1458 nodes and 1948 edges.

Course schedule

  Date Lecture (9:00-10:45) Lab session (11:00-12:45)
1. Fri Sep 5, 2025 Lecture 0: Course information
Lecture 1: Introduction and small world phenomenon
Instruction: Introduction to Gephi
Work on Assignment 1
... ... ... ...
Mon Sep 29, 2025 Deadline for Assignment 1 (AoE; hand in via Brightspace
... ... ... ...
Mon Oct 27, 2025 Deadline for Assignment 2 (AoE; hand in via Brightspace)
... ... ... ...
Thu Nov 13, 2025 "Deadline" for a draft of the first half of the Course project paper (bring 2 printed copies to tomorrow's peer review session)
10. Fri Nov 14, 2025 Peer review session (in team pairs) ...
... ... ... ...
Thu Dec 4, 2025 "Deadline" for a substantial part of the Course project code and experimental pipeline (have it available digitally for review tomorrow)
13. Fri Dec 5, 2025 Code review session (in team pairs) ...
... ... ... ...
Dec 14, 2025 Deadline for final Course project paper and accompanying code (AoE; hand in via Brightspace)
Dec 17, 2025 Deadline for retake assignment to replace failed assignment(s) (AoE; hand in via Brightspace on top of failed assignment)
Dec 19, 2025 Course end. Grades are sent to student administration.
Jan 31, 2026 Course project retake deadline

gephi

About social network analysis tools and packages. There exist different tools and packages for social network analysis. In this course, we cover two of them in this course, with complementary advantages:

  1. Gephi, an easy-to-use tool with a graphical interface useful for visualization and quick analysis of relatively small network data (this week, see below).
  2. NetworkX, an extensive Python package for network analysis that can handle larger network datasets and computations (next week).

Learning goals. The main goal of this lab session is to become familiar with Gephi (experimental beta-software to visualize networks for research purposes) and its input format. At the end of this session you should be able to:

  • Know how to use Gephi for social network analysis
  • Import and visualize raw network data with labeled nodes and labeled and/or weighted edges (directed or undirected),
  • Understand how to map edge and node size and color to structural network properties such as the node degree and edge type,
  • Know how to apply filters to the visualization, for example to focus only on the giant component,
  • Export a vector graphic PDF of your network for reuse in for example a presentation or paper,
  • Export computed node data for reuse in another program.

There is no deliverable for this lab session, but you are assumed to know the tool afterwards. Practice more at home if needed.


Instructions for today: Walk through the complete Gephi tutorial.

Note that the tutorial briefly covers topic such as centrality and communities, that will not be covered extensively until Lecture 2.

Done? Get started with the practical part of Assignment 1. You can download the smaller datafiles medium.tsv and large.tsv. If you want to analyze huge.tsv, you will have to get it from the shared folder in the ISSC Linux or LIACS DS lab environment, as stated in the assignment.


Reading material

In the past, students have expressed interest in additional reading material to help freshen up on skills and knowledge required for this course.


Past editions

The course was also given in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.