Interactive information visualization in a conference location

Social Network Data Analytics, 2011

Visualizing Social Networks" is a social network visualization tool that explores social groups in Habbo Hotel, an online avatar-based chat community targeted at adolescents. Within the field of information visualization, the best way to represent large networks is still very much an open question. This thesis addresses this question by exploring different methods of representing the nature of social networks. Specifically, it visualizes various aspects of the social phenomenon of groups and cliques among adolescents in an online chat environment, which include social interactions between members of the same group and between members of different groups, and the organizational structure of groups unique to Habbo Hotel. Users of the tool are can query the visualizations in order to highlight different aspects of the groups.

2006

Assessments of configurations, dynamics, and cause and effect are at the heart of our thinking and explanation. Although numerous methods for such assessments have been developed and are being used in daily scientific practice, visualization is usually not considered to be one of them. In this article we first argue that this is due to the common practice of visualizing data rather than the information contained in it; second, we address a number of principles for effective visualization; and third, we assess visualizations generated by the software tool visone in order to explain network outcomes using these principles.

Big Data and Cognitive Computing

Social networking platforms connect people from all around the world. Because of their user-friendliness and easy accessibility, their traffic is increasing drastically. Such active participation has caught the attention of many research groups that are focusing on understanding human behavior to study the dynamics of these social networks. Oftentimes, perceiving these networks is hard, mainly due to either the large size of the data involved or the ineffective use of visualization strategies. This work introduces VizTract to ease the visual perception of complex social networks. VizTract is a two-level graph abstraction visualization tool that is designed to visualize both hierarchical and adjacency information in a tree structure. We use the Facebook dataset from the Social Network Analysis Project from Stanford University. On this data, social groups are referred as circles, social network users as nodes, and interactions as edges between the nodes. Our approach is to present a v...

Computational Social Networks, 2012

Social Network Analysis (SNA) is becoming an important tool for investigators, but all the necessary information is often available in a distributed environment. Currently there is no information system that helps managers and team leaders monitor the status of a social network. This chapter presents an overview of the basic concepts of social networks in data analysis including social network analysis metrics and performances. Different problems in social networks are discussed such as uncertainty, missing data and finding the shortest path in a social network. Community structure, detection and visualization in social network analysis is also illustrated. This chapter bridges the gap among the users by combining social network analysis methods and information visualization technology to help a user visually identify the occurrence of a possible relationship amongst the members in a social network. The chapter illustrates an online visualization method for a DBLP N. Ghali ( )

2006

Centrality analysis determines the importance of vertices in a network based on their connectivity within the network structure. It is a widely used technique to analyse network-structured data. A particularly important task is the comparison of different centrality measures within one network. We present three methods for the exploration and comparison of centrality measures within a network: 3D parallel coordinates, orbit-based comparison and hierarchy-based comparison. There is a common underlying idea to all three methods: for each centrality measure the graph is copied and drawn in a separate 2D plane with vertex position dependent on centrality. These planes are then stacked into the third dimension so that the different centrality measures may be easily compared. Only the details of how centrality is mapped to vertex position are different in each method. For 3D parallel coordinates vertices are placed on vertical lines; for orbit-based comparison vertices are placed on concentric circles and for hierarchy-based comparison vertices are placed on horizontal lines. The second and third solutions make it particularly easy to track changing vertex-centrality values in the context of the underlying network structure. The usability of these methods is demonstrated on biological and social networks.

2004

Abstract This paper describes a visual social browser for exploring the evolution of social networks over time. We consider the exchange of e-mails between actors as an approximation of social ties. Our system analyzes the dynamic progression of communication patterns of e-mail traffic within groups of individuals. It combines a discrete visualization view, a continuous visualization view, and an adjacency matrix view.

American Journal of Sociology, 2005

Increased interest in longitudinal social networks and the recognition that visualization fosters theoretical insight create a need for dynamic network visualizations, or network "movies." This article confronts theoretical questions surrounding the temporal representations of social networks and technical questions about how best to link network change to changes in the graphical representation. The authors divide network movies into (1) static flip books, where node position remains constant but edges cumulate over time, and (2) dynamic movies, where nodes move as a function of changes in relations. Flip books are particularly useful in contexts where relations are sparse. For more connected networks, movies are often more appropriate. Three empirical examples demonstrate the advantages of different movie styles. A new software program for creating network movies is discussed in the appendix.

In this paper, we present a case study of applying visual analytics methods to explore a dynamic social network. The visualization and analysis of this kind of data is challenging because of its relational and temporal nature. We illustrate a method and its prototypical implementation that integrate: the combination of three views based on node-link diagrams, a dynamic layout, the visualization of social network analysis metrics, and specific interaction techniques for tracking node trajectories and connections over time. We discuss how this integration of visual, interactive and analytical methods, driven by perceptual principles, can help users with gaining insights when examining dynamic organizational network data.

Image: The core (n 450) of a social network of over 5,000 urban residents (in Canberra, Australia).