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Minerva Singh

Do You Want to Gain an Edge by Gleaning Novel Insights from Social Media?

Do You Want to Harness the Power of Unstructured Text and Social Media to Predict Trends?

Over the past decade there has been an explosion in social media sites and now sites like Facebook and Twitter are used for everything from sharing information to distributing news. Social media both captures and sets trends. Mining unstructured text data and social media is the latest frontier of machine learning and data science. 

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Do You Want to Gain an Edge by Gleaning Novel Insights from Social Media?

Do You Want to Harness the Power of Unstructured Text and Social Media to Predict Trends?

Over the past decade there has been an explosion in social media sites and now sites like Facebook and Twitter are used for everything from sharing information to distributing news. Social media both captures and sets trends. Mining unstructured text data and social media is the latest frontier of machine learning and data science. 

I recently finished a PhD at Cambridge University (Tropical Ecology and Conservation). I have several years of experience in analyzing real-life data from different sources using data science-related techniques and producing publications for international peer-reviewed journals. Unlike other courses out there, which focus on theory and outdated methods, this course will teach you practical techniques to harness the power of both text data and social media to build powerful predictive models. We will cover web-scraping, text mining and natural language processing along with mining social media sites like Twitter and Facebook for text data. Additionally, you will learn to apply both exploratory data analysis and machine learning techniques to gain actionable insights from text and social media data.

Many courses use made-up data that does not empower students to implement R based data science in real life. After taking this course, you’ll easily use packages like the caret, dplyr to work with real data in R. You will also learn to use the common social media mining and natural language processing packages to extract insights from text data.   I will even introduce you to some very important practical case studies - such as identifying important words in a text and predicting movie sentiments based on textual reviews. You will also extract tweets pertaining to trending topics analyze their underlying sentiments and identify topics with Latent Dirichlet allocation. With this Powerful course, you’ll know it all:  extracting text data from websites, extracting data from social media sites and carrying out analysis of these using visualization, stats, machine learning, and deep learning.  

Start analyzing data for your own projects, whatever your skill level and Impress your potential employers with actual examples of your data science projects.

 

  • Web-Scraping using R

  • Extracting text data from Twitter and Facebook using APIs

  • Extract and clean data from the FourSquare app

  • Exploratory data analysis of textual data

  • Common Natural Language Processing techniques such as sentiment analysis and topic modelling

  • Implement machine learning techniques such as clustering, regression and classification on textual data

  • Network analysis

  • Plus you will apply your newly gained skills and complete a practical text analysis assignment

    We will spend some time dealing with some of the theoretical concepts. However, the majority of the course will focus on implementing different techniques on real data and interpreting the results.

    After each video, you will learn a new concept or technique which you may apply to your own projects.

    All the data and code used in the course has been made available free of charge and you can use it as you like. You will also have access to additional lectures that are added in the future for FREE.

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    What's inside

    Learning objectives

    • Students will be able to read in data from different sources- including databases
    • Basic webscraping- extracting text and tabular data from html pages
    • Social media mining from facebook and twitter
    • Extract information relating to tweets and posts
    • Analyze text data for emotions
    • Carry out sentiment analysis
    • Implement natural language processing (nlp) on different types of text data

    Syllabus

    INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE: The Key Concepts and Software Tools
    About the Course and Instructor
    Data and Scripts For the Course
    Introduction to R and RStudio
    Read more
    Conclusion to Section 1
    Reading in Data from Different Sources
    Read in CSV & Excel Data
    Read in Data from Online CSV
    Read in Zipped File
    Read Data from a Database
    Read in JSON Data
    Read in Data from PDF Documents
    Read in Tables from PDF Documents
    Conclusion to Section 2
    (a) Learn more about web pages (b) Use the rvest package to extract text from different parts of an HTML page
    Read in Data From Online Google Sheets
    Read in Data from Online HTML Tables-Part 1
    Read in Data from Online HTML Tables-Part 2
    Get and Clean Data from HTML Tables
    Read Text Data from an HTML Page
    Introduction to Selector Gadget
    More Webscraping With rvest-IMDB Webpage
    Another Way of Accessing Webpage Elements
    Conclusions to Section 3
    Introduction to APIs
    What is an API?
    Extract Text Data from Guardian Newspaper
    (c) Social media mining (d) extract data from Twitter (e) Extract data from Facebook
    Extract Data from Facebook
    Get More out Of Facebook
    Set up a Twitter App for Mining Data from Twitter
    Extract Tweets Using R
    More Twitter Data Extraction Using R
    Get Tweet Locations
    Get Location Specific Trends
    Learn More About the Followers of a Twitter Handle
    Another Way of Extracting Information From Twitter- the rtweet Package
    Geolocation Specific Tweets With "rtweet"
    More Data Extraction Using rtweet
    Locations of Tweets
    Mining Github Using R
    Set up the FourSquare App
    Extract Reviews for Venues on FourSquare
    Conclusions to Section 5
    Exploring Text Data For Preliminary Ideas
    Explore Tweet Data
    A Brief Explanation
    EDA With Text Data
    Examine Multiple Document Corpus of Text
    Brief Introduction to tidytext
    Text Exploration & Visualization with tidytext
    Explore Multiple Texts with tidytext
    Count Unique Words in Tweets
    Visualizing Text Data as TF-IDF
    TF-IDF in Graphical Form
    Conclusions to Section 6
    Natural Language Processing: Sentiment Analysis
    Wordclouds for Visualizing Tweet Sentiments: India's Demonetization Policy
    Wordclouds for Visualizing Reviews
    Tidy Wordclouds
    Quanteda Wordcloud
    Word Frequency in Text Data
    Tweet Sentiments- Mugabe's Ouster
    Tidy Sentiments- Sentiment Analysis Using tidytext
    Examine the Polarity of Text
    Examine the Polarity of Tweets
    Topic Modelling a Document
    Topic Modelling Multiple Documents
    Topic Modelling Tweets Using Quanteda
    Conclusions to Section 7
    Text Data and Machine Learning
    Clustering for Text Data
    Clustering Tweets with Quanteda
    Regression on Text Data
    Identify Spam Emails with Supervised Classification
    Introduction to RTextTools
    More on RTextTools
    Classifying Textual Data
    ML Approaches For Predicting a Binary Outcome in Text Data
    ML Approaches For Predicting a Multi-Class Outcome in Text Data
    Network Analysis
    A Small (Social) Network
    A More Theoretical Explanation
    Build & Visualize a Network
    Network of Emails
    More on Network Visualization
    Analysis of Tweet Network
    Identify Word Pair Networks
    Network of Words
    Text Analysis of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park
    Miscellaneous Lectures
    Github
    Using R Within Google Colab
    What Is Data Science?
    Data Editing

    Good to know

    Know what's good
    , what to watch for
    , and possible dealbreakers
    Develops skills and techniques for extracting text data and social media, which is a valuable skill for many roles in industry and research
    Taught by Minerva Singh, a PhD with expertise in Tropical Ecology and Conservation and data science
    Requires extensive background knowledge in data science and machine learning
    Students are expected to have access to software
    Develops professional skills and expertise on web-scraping, text-mining, and natural language processing
    Teaches skills and knowledge used throughout industry and academia

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    Activities

    Be better prepared before your course. Deepen your understanding during and after it. Supplement your coursework and achieve mastery of the topics covered in Text Mining and Natural Language Processing in R with these activities:
    Organize Your Notes, Assignments, and Recordings
    Maintaining an organized system for your course materials will facilitate efficient review and help you retain information better.
    Show steps
    • Create a dedicated folder or notebook for the course
    • File notes, assignments, and recordings in a logical manner
    • Use headings, subheadings, and summaries to structure your notes
    • Consider using digital tools for organization and collaboration
    Compile a List of Resources for Social Media Mining and Analysis
    Curating a compilation of resources will provide you with a valuable reference and help you stay up-to-date in the field.
    Show steps
    • Identify relevant resources such as articles, tutorials, and tools
    • Organize the resources into categories for easy access
    • Include brief descriptions or annotations for each resource
    • Share your compilation with other students or interested individuals
    Web Scraping Practice Exercises
    Strengthen your web scraping skills by solving practical exercises.
    Browse courses on Web Scraping
    Show steps
    • Find a website or online resource.
    • Write a web scraping script to extract specific data from the website.
    • Test your script and refine it as needed.
    Nine other activities
    Expand to see all activities and additional details
    Show all 12 activities
    Read 'Natural Language Processing with Python' by Steven Bird et al.
    This book provides a comprehensive overview of NLP techniques and will deepen your understanding of the concepts covered in this course.
    Show steps
    • Read chapters relevant to the course topics
    • Work through the exercises and examples provided in the book
    • Implement some of the techniques described in the book in your own projects
    Solve Practice Problems on Natural Language Processing
    Regular practice will reinforce your understanding of NLP algorithms and improve your problem-solving abilities.
    Show steps
    • Find practice problems online or in textbooks
    • Solve the problems using appropriate NLP techniques
    • Check your solutions and identify areas for improvement
    • Discuss your solutions with peers or participate in online forums
    Explore the tidytext Library for Text Mining
    Familiarizing yourself with powerful libraries like tidytext will provide hands-on experience and enhance your text analysis skills.
    Browse courses on Text Mining
    Show steps
    • Install and import the tidytext library
    • Learn the basics of text manipulation and exploration
    • Practice cleaning and tokenizing text data
    • Explore techniques for creating and visualizing word clouds
    • Experiment with more advanced tidytext functions
    Peer Study Group: Text Mining Techniques
    Collaborate with peers to reinforce text mining concepts and share insights.
    Browse courses on Text Mining
    Show steps
    • Form a study group with 2-3 peers.
    • Choose a topic related to text mining.
    • Each member presents their findings and leads a discussion.
    Tutorial: Sentiment Analysis with Python
    Enhance your skills in analyzing and interpreting sentiments in social media text.
    Browse courses on Sentiment Analysis
    Show steps
    • Find a tutorial on sentiment analysis with Python.
    • Follow the tutorial step-by-step, implementing the code in your own Python environment.
    • Test the sentiment analysis model on your own social media data.
    Build a Social Media Sentiment Analysis Dashboard
    Putting into practice your skills in social media mining and sentiment analysis by building a dashboard will help you solidify your understanding.
    Browse courses on Sentiment Analysis
    Show steps
    • Gather data from various social media platforms
    • Clean and pre-process the data
    • Perform sentiment analysis using appropriate techniques
    • Design and implement visualizations to display the sentiment analysis results
    • Deploy the dashboard and share your analysis
    Write a Blog Post on Social Media Sentiment Analysis Techniques
    Explaining concepts to others through writing will solidify your understanding and enhance your communication skills.
    Browse courses on Technical Writing
    Show steps
    • Choose a specific aspect of social media sentiment analysis
    • Research and gather information from reliable sources
    • Write a clear and engaging blog post explaining the techniques
    • Include examples and illustrations to support your explanations
    • Publish your blog post and share it with others
    Social Media Analytics Workshop
    Deepen your understanding of social media analytics techniques in a hands-on setting.
    Browse courses on Social Media Analytics
    Show steps
    • Register for the workshop.
    • Attend the workshop and actively participate in the exercises.
    • Apply the techniques learned to analyze your own social media data.
    Participate in a Kaggle Competition on Text Data Analysis
    Applying your skills in a competitive environment will challenge you to think critically and improve your problem-solving abilities.
    Browse courses on Text Data Analysis
    Show steps
    • Identify a relevant competition on the Kaggle platform
    • Read and understand the competition guidelines
    • Prepare your data and build a machine learning model
    • Submit your solution and track your progress
    • Analyze the results and learn from the experience

    Career center

    Learners who complete Text Mining and Natural Language Processing in R will develop knowledge and skills that may be useful to these careers:
    NLP Engineer
    An NLP Engineer designs, develops, and deploys natural language processing models. They can be responsible for building models that can perform tasks such as sentiment analysis, topic modeling, and text classification. This course can help you build a strong foundation in the fundamentals of NLP, and provide you with the skills you need to develop and deploy your own NLP models. The course also provides an introduction to social media mining, which can be helpful for NLP Engineers who want to work on projects that involve social media data.
    Data Scientist
    A Data Scientist uses data to solve business problems. They can work on a variety of projects, such as developing predictive models, identifying trends, and understanding customer behavior. This course can help you build a strong foundation in the fundamentals of data science, and provide you with the skills you need to develop and deploy your own data science projects. The course also provides an introduction to social media mining, which can be helpful for Data Scientists who want to work on projects that involve social media data.
    Machine Learning Engineer
    A Machine Learning Engineer designs, develops, and deploys machine learning models. They can work on a variety of projects, such as developing predictive models, identifying trends, and understanding customer behavior. This course can help you build a strong foundation in the fundamentals of machine learning, and provide you with the skills you need to develop and deploy your own machine learning models. The course also provides an introduction to social media mining, which can be helpful for Machine Learning Engineers who want to work on projects that involve social media data.
    Software Engineer
    A Software Engineer designs, develops, and deploys software applications. They can work on a variety of projects, such as developing new features for existing applications, or creating new applications from scratch. This course can help you build a strong foundation in the fundamentals of software engineering, and provide you with the skills you need to develop and deploy your own software applications. The course also provides an introduction to social media mining, which can be helpful for Software Engineers who want to work on projects that involve social media data.
    Business Analyst
    A Business Analyst studies business needs in order to identify opportunities for improvement, and develop innovative solutions. They may analyze data, or focus on strategy. This course can help build a foundation in data analysis, visualization and project management. It also provides an introduction to social media mining, which can be helpful for Business Analysts who want to work on projects that involve social media data.
    Research Scientist
    A Research Scientist conducts research in a specific field of science. They can work on a variety of projects, such as developing new technologies, or studying the natural world. This course can help you build a strong foundation in conducting research and can help you develop skills in data analysis and visualization. The course also provides an introduction to social media mining, which can be helpful for Research Scientists who want to work on projects that involve social media data.
    Quantitative Analyst
    A Quantitative Analyst uses mathematical and statistical methods to solve problems in the financial industry. They can work on a variety of projects, such as developing trading strategies, or assessing risk. This course can help you build a strong foundation in the fundamentals of quantitative analysis, and provide you with the skills you need to develop and deploy your own quantitative models. The course also provides an introduction to social media mining, which can be helpful for Quantitative Analysts who want to work on projects that involve social media data.
    Data Analyst
    A Data Analyst analyzes data in order to identify trends and patterns. They can work on a variety of projects, such as developing marketing campaigns, or identifying fraud. This course can help you build a strong foundation in the fundamentals of data analysis, and provide you with the skills you need to develop and deploy your own data analysis projects. The course also provides an introduction to social media mining, which can be helpful for Data Analysts who want to work on projects that involve social media data.
    Product Manager
    A Product Manager is responsible for the development and launch of new products. They work with engineers, designers, and marketers to bring new products to market. This course can help you build a strong foundation in the fundamentals of product management, and provide you with the skills you need to develop and launch your own products. The course also provides an introduction to social media mining, which can be helpful for Product Managers who want to work on projects that involve social media data.
    Marketing Analyst
    A Marketing Analyst analyzes marketing data in order to identify trends and patterns. They can work on a variety of projects, such as developing marketing campaigns, or identifying customer behavior. This course can help you build a strong foundation in the fundamentals of marketing analysis, and provide you with the skills you need to develop and deploy your own marketing analysis projects. The course also provides an introduction to social media mining, which can be helpful for Marketing Analysts who want to work on projects that involve social media data.
    Social Media Manager
    A Social Media Manager is responsible for the development and implementation of social media strategies. They can work on a variety of projects, such as developing content, or managing social media campaigns. This course can help you build a strong foundation in the fundamentals of social media marketing, and provide you with the skills you need to develop and implement your own social media strategies. The course also provides an introduction to social media mining, which can be helpful for Social Media Managers who want to work on projects that involve social media data.
    Content Writer
    A Content Writer creates written content for a variety of purposes, such as marketing, advertising, or journalism. This course can help you build a strong foundation in the fundamentals of content writing, and provide you with the skills you need to develop and write your own content. The course also provides an introduction to social media mining, which can be helpful for Content Writers who want to work on projects that involve social media data.
    Web Developer
    A Web Developer designs and develops websites. They can work on a variety of projects, such as developing new websites, or maintaining existing websites. This course can help provide you with the skills you need to develop and deploy your own websites. The course also provides an introduction to social media mining, which can be helpful for Web Developers who want to work on projects that involve social media data.
    Technical Writer
    A Technical Writer creates technical documentation for a variety of purposes, such as user manuals, or software documentation. This course can help you build a strong foundation in the fundamentals of technical writing, and provide you with the skills you need to develop and write your own technical documentation. The course also provides an introduction to social media mining, which can be helpful for Technical Writers who want to work on projects that involve social media data.
    Librarian
    A Librarian helps people find and access information. They can work in a variety of settings, such as public libraries, or academic libraries. This course can provide you with the skills you need to help people find and access information on social media. The course also provides an introduction to social media mining, which can be helpful for Librarians who want to work on projects that involve social media data.

    Reading list

    We've selected 13 books that we think will supplement your learning. Use these to develop background knowledge, enrich your coursework, and gain a deeper understanding of the topics covered in Text Mining and Natural Language Processing in R.
    Will introduce you to the concepts of web mining and social media mining, and how to use open source tools to collect and analyze data from the social web.
    Provides a practical guide to text mining and analysis using R, a popular open-source programming language.
    Provides a practical introduction to text mining in R, using the tidyverse suite of packages.
    Provides a comprehensive introduction to the R programming language, with a focus on data science applications.
    Provides a comprehensive overview of social media mining techniques, with a focus on using text mining and network analysis for business intelligence and brand management.
    Comprehensive introduction to the R programming language, with a focus on software design.
    Provides a comprehensive overview of speech and language processing techniques, including text mining.

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