Digital Space Lab

15/03/2026

We are drowning in noise while orientation collapses.

Digital Space Lab architect Harald Meier has just published a new essay on his recently launched blog Noise is the Signal. The piece explores “The Orientation Crisis of the Information Age”: Why do we produce more explanations than ever - yet struggle to understand the situations we are actually in?

Modern platform logic runs on attention games: hiding links in comments, feeding algorithms, performing relevance just to stay visible. These mechanisms don’t solve the orientation crisis - they produce it. So we are opting out of that game. No detours. Just the argument:

https://digitalspacelab.com/blog/f/the-orientation-crisis-of-the-information-age

13/02/2026

For a while, Digital Space Lab was quiet.

Not inactive — but in reconstruction.

Over the past years, the structural conditions around us have shifted significantly. Amplification has intensified. Narratives optimize themselves for attention. Analytical capability has become widely accessible through large language models. What hasn’t become easier is orientation.

In times where complexity accelerates and certainty performs loudly, structural clarity becomes a scarce resource.

The work behind Digital Space Lab has evolved accordingly. What began as an internal operating model has taken shape as a coherent orientation architecture — designed to help navigate amplified systems without surrendering judgment to louder voices or simplified narratives.

This is not about hype.
Not about fear.
And not about grand solutions.

It is about precision.
Responsibility.
And staying structurally clear while complexity increases.

Digital Space Lab is operational again.

https://digitalspacelab.com/blog/f/when-everything-speaks-at-once

29/07/2021

Looking forward to ! Join us for a NodeXL workshop to learn how to conduct a Social Network Analysis.

Join us from 8 to 10 September 2021 for a friendly, valuable and inspiring event which is a must for everyone involved in online research: the 23rd General Online Research Conference! Meet like-minded people and get to know the latest trends in online research.

17/06/2021

Small gesture, big impact!

Removing sugar water from a table was maybe one of the best moves ever by Cristiano Ronaldo. The Twitter community reacted, and so did the Coca-Cola shares.

So let's look at a Twitter network analysis of this topic using the query "Ronaldo (agua OR water OR cola OR coke)". Here are a few insights:

The network contains 18k tweets from 17k users tweeting over a period of 4 hours on June 14, 2021, just after the press conference.
The share of retweets with 93% is much higher than in a "usual" Twitter discussion.

The network map reveals many rather small clusters with a hub-and-spoke broadcast structure. At the same time there is only little interaction between the groups.

When these structures emerge in such a short period of time, we can certainly speak of viral content.

Have a look at the full NodeXL Pro INSIGHTS report here (best viewed in Chrome or Edge):

https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiMmJlOTI3ZGMtNjQxMS00ZWUzLWE3MGEtOGIyNTI1ZGU1YTFlIiwidCI6IjI5ZDRjMTFjLTA1N2MtNDg3Zi04ZmRhLWU4NmQ1OTkzOWU2NCIsImMiOjZ9

Interested in finding out the difference between popular and viral content? Just create a network analysis with a network map.

If you don´t know how, I will do that for you. Or I can teach you how to do that.

You can book training sessions on Social Media Network Analysis

23/03/2021

Networks can be found everywhere, especially in social media!

Would you like to learn how to conduct a social network analysis with data from Twitter, YouTube or Wikipedia?

We provide 1:1 tutorials as well as tutorials for groups.

11/03/2019

Last week, Harald presented findings from his study "Insights from mapping the Twitter network of the German Bundestag" at in Cologne. The study is part of the research project "Mapping Political Networks" at the Social Media Research Foundation.

Here is the slide deck: https://www.slideshare.net/HaraldMeier1/harald-meier-insights-from-mapping-the-twitter-network-of-the-german-bundestag

05/03/2019

This is great! 😃 Thank you Team NodeXL 😉

NodeXL Pro Tutorials: Learn how to use NodeXL Pro with step-by-step tutorials provided by the Social Media Research Foundation.

01/03/2019

Same topic, different platforms - here are four different NodeXL network maps related to the tourism destination Winterberg in central Germany:

1. page-Like network: Fan Page Winterberg.de (Full report: http://bit.ly/2EbSWdS)

2. Youtube Video network: Search term Winterberg (Full report: http://bit.ly/2ErHwTw)

3. Wikipedia Article network: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winterberg (Full report: https://bit.ly/2tLRqds)

4. Twitter User network: Search term (Full report: http://bit.ly/2T5UUqg)

12/02/2019

Experimenting with NodeXL Pro to create user-image and user-domain networks. This is fun!

08/11/2018

Looking forward to travel to Berlin next week! At Predictive Analytics World PAWCON Harald will present a Deep Dive session on Social Network Analysis (SNA) with NodeXL along with Dr. Marc Smith, director of the Social Media Research Foundation.

03/11/2018

Even though you won´t find many posts around here, there is a lot going on at the Digital Space Lab!

This summer Harald conducted several NodeXL workshops with Dr. Wasim Ahmed from Northumbria University: At Sunbelt Conference in Uterect, at Social Media + Society conference in Copenhagen, and at the department of communication studies at Roskilde University.

Next stop is Predictive Analytics World in Berlin on November 14th, 2018. Harald and the director of the Social Media Research Foundation Dr. Marc Smith will speak in a Deep Dive Marketing Analytics session about social network analysis with NodeXL:

Agenda 2018 Predictive Analytics World Berlin November 13-14, 2018, Estrel Hotel Berlin