Get Followers and Follows
You can retrieve a list of followers and those followed by a userthrough theget_followers andget_followsfunctions, respectively. This gives a glimpse of their social dynamicson the platform.
get_followers
Retrieve the followers of a specific account withget_followers:
get_followers(actor ="benguinaudeau.bsky.social",limit =200)|> dplyr::glimpse()#> Rows: 200#> Columns: 8#> $ did <chr> "did:plc:nol67uyam6hzj5…#> $ indexed_at <dttm> 2024-02-29 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 withget_follows:
get_follows(actor ="benguinaudeau.bsky.social",limit =200)|> dplyr::glimpse()#> Rows: 174#> Columns: 8#> $ did <chr> "did:plc:3ryku2cbgpazor…#> $ indexed_at <dttm> 2024-02-08 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. theirbio). 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 followernetwork for a given user on Blue Sky. The primary focus is on theinterconnected relationships among followers.
The first step is to load some additional packages. Then we get thefollowers for the main user we are interested in. We will then delvedeeper 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 usersome_followers<-get_followers(actor ="benguinaudeau.bsky.social",limit =10)$actor_handle# For each follower, retrieve their own set of followers.# This provides a nested view of relationships.followers_of_followers<- some_followers|> purrr::map_dfr(~{get_followers(actor = .x,limit =200)|>mutate(from = .x) })|> dplyr::rename(to = actor_handle)|> dplyr::select(from, to)%>% dplyr::add_count(to,name ="n_to")%>% dplyr::add_count(from,name ="n_from")%>% dplyr::filter(n_to>1| n_from>1)%>% dplyr::select(-n_to:-n_from)Building and Visualizing the Follower Network
# Construct the network graph and plotgraph<- tidygraph::as_tbl_graph(followers_of_followers,directed =TRUE)# Use ggraph to visualize the network.ggraph::ggraph(graph,layout ='fr')+ ggraph::geom_edge_link()+ ggraph::geom_node_point(aes(size = tidygraph::centrality_pagerank()),color ="lightblue")+ ggraph::geom_node_text(aes(label = name,size = tidygraph::centrality_pagerank(),family ="mono",fontface ="bold"),vjust =1,hjust =1,check_overlap = T,color ="white",show.legend = F)+ ggraph::geom_node_text(aes(label = name,size = tidygraph::centrality_pagerank(),family ="mono"),vjust =1,hjust =1,check_overlap = T,color ="blue",show.legend = F)+ ggplot2::theme_void()+ ggplot2::theme(legend.position ="bottom")Follower Network
Find people to follow
You can use a similar approach to find new people you might want tofollow. First get all the people you already follow by quering your ownaccount:
my_follows<-get_follows(actor ="jbgruber.bsky.social",limit =10)$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 followfollows_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 × 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 rowsThe original account shows up in this overview, as do accounts thatwere excluded because of the limit set to do the demonstration.
But all of these accounts look interesting!