Paper Title
A Twitter Social Network Analysis Based on Graph and Network Theory: The South African Health Insurance Bill Case

Abstract
Social Network Analysis (SNA) is the process of distinguishing between relationships and interchanges among firms, individuals and connected information objects through mapping. Through a social network theory and graph theory lens, this study aims to model the announcement of the introduction of a National Health Insurance Bill to the South African parliament for debate. Based on graph theory, algorithms are used to extract knowledgeand efficient visualisation techniques based on Twitter data.An instrumental, single case study design and SNA secured contextual and timely Twitter information interchanges of the NHI hashtag is used. One of the uniqueness’s of this inquiry is the use of the ‘Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel Pro’ (NodeXL Pro) tool for social media analytics to simplify the Twitter SNA tasks and analysis of the #NHI social media network. The findings explain the data dispersion and network structure of the #NHI case on Twitter. The significance of the study is that the SNA clearly identifies the influencers, popular Twitter users and gatekeepers in the announcement of in a highly controversialhealthcarebill that will affect all South African citizens. Keywords - Social network analysis, Graph theory, Network theory, Twitter, NodeXL Pro.