Networks

Get Followers and Follows

You can retrieve a list of followers and those followed by a user through the get_followers and get_follows functions, respectively. This gives a glimpse of their social dynamics on the platform.

Load the package

 library(atrrr)

`get_followers`

Retrieve the followers of a specific account with get_followers:

 get_followers(actor = "benguinaudeau.bsky.social", limit = 200) |>
 dplyr::glimpse()
 #> Rows: 200
 #> Columns: 8
 #> $ did <chr> "did:plc:nol67uyam6hzj5...
 #> $ indexed_at <dttm> 2024年02月29日 13:50:12, 2...
 #> $ actor_handle <chr> "dkarpa.bsky.social", "...
 #> $ actor_name <chr> "David Karpa", "Rémi Pa...
 #> $ actor_description <chr> "PhD-candidate UBremen....
 #> $ actor_avatar <chr> "https://cdn.bsky.app/i...
 #> $ viewer_data <list> [FALSE, FALSE], [FALSE...
 #> $ labels_data <list> [], [], [], [], [], []...

`get_follows`

Retrieve the accounts that are followed by a specific account with get_follows:

 get_follows(actor = "benguinaudeau.bsky.social", limit = 200) |>
 dplyr::glimpse()
 #> Rows: 174
 #> Columns: 8
 #> $ did <chr> "did:plc:3ryku2cbgpazor...
 #> $ indexed_at <dttm> 2024年02月08日 05:16:04, 2...
 #> $ actor_handle <chr> "beamagistro.bsky.socia...
 #> $ actor_name <chr> "Beatrice Magistro", "S...
 #> $ actor_description <chr> "PostDoc @Caltech, thru...
 #> $ actor_avatar <chr> "https://cdn.bsky.app/i...
 #> $ viewer_data <list> [FALSE, FALSE], [FALSE...
 #> $ labels_data <list> [], [], [], [], [], []...

You’ll notice each follower/following has a description (i.e. their bio). It’s a nifty way to get to know a bit about them at a glance!

Follower Network Visualization

This section guides you through the process of visualizing a follower network for a given user on Blue Sky. The primary focus is on the interconnected relationships among followers.

The first step is to load some additional packages. Then we get the followers for the main user we are interested in. We will then delve deeper and fetch the followers for each of these followers.

 library(ggplot2)
 library(dplyr)
 library(purrr)
 library(tidyr)
 library(igraph)
 library(ggraph)
 library(tidygraph)
 
 # Retrieve the followers for the main user
some_followers <- get_followers(actor = "benguinaudeau.bsky.social", limit = 10)$actor_handle
 
 # For each follower, retrieve their own set of followers.
 # This provides a nested view of relationships.
followers_of_followers <- some_followers |>
 purrr::map_dfr(~{
 get_followers(actor = .x, limit = 200) |>
 mutate(from = .x)
 }) |>
 dplyr::rename(to = actor_handle) |>
 dplyr::select(from, to) %>%
 dplyr::add_count(to, name = "n_to") %>%
 dplyr::add_count(from, name = "n_from") %>%
 dplyr::filter(n_to > 1 | n_from > 1) %>%
 dplyr::select(-n_to:-n_from)

Building and Visualizing the Follower Network

 # Construct the network graph and plot
graph <- tidygraph::as_tbl_graph(followers_of_followers, directed = TRUE)
 
 # Use ggraph to visualize the network.
ggraph::ggraph(graph, layout = 'fr') +
 ggraph::geom_edge_link() +
 ggraph::geom_node_point(aes(size = tidygraph::centrality_pagerank()), color = "lightblue") +
 ggraph::geom_node_text(aes(label = name, size = tidygraph::centrality_pagerank(), family = "mono", fontface = "bold"),
 vjust = 1, hjust = 1, check_overlap = T, color = "white", show.legend = F) +
 ggraph::geom_node_text(aes(label = name, size = tidygraph::centrality_pagerank(), family = "mono"),
 vjust = 1, hjust = 1, check_overlap = T, color = "blue", show.legend = F) +
 ggplot2::theme_void() +
 ggplot2::theme(legend.position = "bottom")

Follower Network

Find people to follow

You can use a similar approach to find new people you might want to follow. First get all the people you already follow by quering your own account:

my_follows <- get_follows(actor = "jbgruber.bsky.social",
 limit = 10)$actor_handle # limit only for demonstration
 
 # For each account you follow, retrieve who they follow.
follows_of_follows <- my_follows |>
 purrr::map_dfr(~{
 get_followers(actor = .x, limit = 100) |>
 mutate(from = .x)
 })
 
 # Now we can check which accounts are popular among the people you already follow
follows_of_follows |>
 dplyr::filter(!actor_handle %in% my_follows) |> # exclude accounts you already follow
 dplyr::count(actor_name, actor_handle, sort = TRUE)
 #> # A tibble: 704 ×ばつ 3
 #> actor_name actor_handle n
 #> <chr> <chr> <int>
 #> 1 Johannes B. Gruber jbgruber.bsky.s... 9
 #> 2 Center for Ballot Freedom fusionvoting.bs... 4
 #> 3 David Karpa dkarpa.bsky.soc... 3
 #> 4 Jacob Ware jacobware.bsky.... 3
 #> 5 Jens Rydgren jensrydgren.bsk... 3
 #> 6 edminkardes gorkem.me 3
 #> 7 Adrian Florea aflorea.bsky.so... 2
 #> 8 Brian O'Meara omearabrian.bsk... 2
 #> 9 Darren Dahly statsepi.bsky.s... 2
 #> 10 Erik Angner erikangner.com 2
 #> # i 694 more rows

The original account shows up in this overview, as do accounts that were excluded because of the limit set to do the demonstration.

But all of these accounts look interesting!

Likes and Reposts

You can also retrieve the accounts that liked or reposted your skeets.

Who liked your skeets?

Want to create like networks? The get_likes function allows you to extract information about users who liked a specific post. By simply providing the post’s URL, you can get a list of users who expressed their appreciation for the content.

 get_likes("https://bsky.app/profile/ryanlcooper.com/post/3kb42gayda52t") |>
 dplyr::glimpse()
 #> Rows: 25
 #> Columns: 5
 #> $ created_at <dttm> 2023年10月06日 21:22:39, 2023-1...
 #> $ indexed_at <dttm> 2023年10月06日 21:22:39, 2023-1...
 #> $ actor_handle <chr> "csehested.bsky.social", "da...
 #> $ actor_name <chr> NA, "TassieDevyl", "Hans LeJ...
 #> $ actor_data <list> ["did:plc:zzsj7hy3wec6fhbwu...

Who reposted your skeets?

Want to create repost networks? Reposts (or reskeets), akin to retweets on platforms like Twitter, amplify the reach of content by sharing it with a wider audience.

The get_reposts function is designed to retrieve information about users who reposted a specific piece of content.

 get_reposts(post_url = "https://bsky.app/profile/ryanlcooper.com/post/3kb42gayda52t") |>
 dplyr::glimpse()
 #> Rows: 25
 #> Columns: 8
 #> $ did <chr> "did:plc:zyvmwfzbkt3igd...
 #> $ indexed_at <dttm> 2024年01月26日 00:03:39, 2...
 #> $ actor_handle <chr> "zunguzungu.bsky.social...
 #> $ actor_name <chr> "Aaron Bady", "Bertie R...
 #> $ actor_description <chr> "Meat blood, bees, thin...
 #> $ actor_avatar <chr> "https://cdn.bsky.app/i...
 #> $ viewer_data <list> [FALSE, FALSE], [FALSE...
 #> $ labels_data <list> [], [], [], [], [], []...