Visualising and analysing online social networks

The immense popularity of online social networks generates sufficient data, that when carefully analysed, can reveal unexpected realities. People are using them to establish relationships in the form of friendships. Based on data collected, students' networks were extracted, visualized and analysed to reflect the connections among South African communities using Gephi. The analysis revealed a slow progress in terms of connections among communities from different ethnic groups in South Africa. This was facilitated through analysis of data collected through Netvizz as well as by using Gephi to visualize social media network structures.