As discussed in detail in Chapter 1, Getting Started with R and Social Media Analytics (see A typical social media analytics workflow), we defined some key steps involved in the analysis of data from different social networks. Continuing with the same theme for Twitter, the different use cases we will work on in the next sections can also be broken down into the following key steps:

The data access step involves understanding the APIs and their corresponding R packages to tap into the social network. We've already talked about creating a Twitter app and did a quick connect and extraction of tweets using R. Each of the following sections will make use of the same initial step for data access and then build upon them based on the requirements. We will discuss and provide details for each of the other steps in this workflow as we progress with the use cases. Stay tuned.