Big Data and Network Analysis: A Promising Integration for Decision-Making

In recent years, we have witnessed an extraordinary growth in globally generated data. The automatic extraction of such extraordinary amount of data, together with innovative data mining and predictive analytics techniques represents an innovative opportunity in supporting decision-making. Thus the main aim of this paper is to explore the opportunity of integrating Big Data techniques with Network Analysis methods. In particular, our study employs descriptive measurements and clustering methods of Network Analysis in order to define relational structures within a Big Data set. We discuss a Big Data tool that collects and analyses info from user interactions with published news and comments about a case study related to a recent Italian constitutional review bill with important political implications