Goal

After reading this article you'll:

  • understand what the Social Graph feature  is
  • be able to add friends and followers to personas
  • be able to set the default following for players 

Summary

Social Graph is the term used to describe someone's network of friends and followers. With this Conducttr feature you can create these networks and allow them to grow during an exercise as players decide to follow and unfollow different personas and players.

Note: As in real life, the personas followed on social media determines what you see in that social media feed. If you're following nobody, you'll not see any published content.


 Name
Social Graph
 Benefit
Model real-life social networks so that players can investigate a persona or player's influence, influences and associates.
 Features
  • Turn social graph off for exercises where it's not needed
  • Create followers on a per-channel basis. For example, connections on Twitter can be different to connections on Facebook
  • Players can unfollow and follow during an exercise


Social Graph configuration - general setting


Note: you can't change the general social graph setting by only uploading the Style - you must upload the scenario to change the social graph.

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Ensure Style allows it

Navigate to Style and check the channel config for each social media channel.

The default setting is for all players to follow everyone.

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Set initial following

If you decide that players shouldn't follow everyone, you might want to have them follow a default set of personas so that their feed isn't completely empty before they decide themselves which personas to follow.

Note: players can find personas to follow by searching the social media channel.


Social Graph configuration - personas


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Navigate to Personas

In the Scenario Editor, navigate to Personas>Personas and open the persona you wish to edit.

Click the social graph icon as shown

 
Adding the social graph

Click to add a panel and select which channel to use. Also select if you're adding followers or following.

Click the pencil icon to edit

You can use search and grouping to find the personas you want to follow or who are following this persona.
 


 
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Follow all personas

Once in the Social Graph panel, you can choose to follow all existing personas for an exercise. This might be useful for role-players.
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Hide from Social Graph

In the Persona panel, you can also decide if you want to hide that persona from the Social Graph. That means that persona won't be shown in any social media channel.

 
How it looks for players

After uploading the social graph, when players investigate a persona's account they'll see the followers and following you created.


Social Graph - bulk import

Configuring the social graph persona-by-persona can be time-consuming for a major exercise and hence Conducttr allows the exporting/importing of the social graph via Excel.

The import feature allows graphs to be overwritten or merged. Merging social graphs is important for large exercises where several people may be working on different clusters of personas.

In the scenario editor go to Personas tab > Personas. Then click on the Social Graph icon.


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As for the Excel file, Conducttr uses a number between 1 & 3 to indicate the relationship between personas:

1 = the row persona is following the column persona

2 = the personas follow each other

3 = the column persona follows the row persona


Tip: Export first the social graph to get the Excel template you can use  to import.


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Example social graph manipulated in Excel



Social Graph considerations

Role-players are players that inhabit personas. As such their social graph adopts the persona's network.