A review of information visualization tools in the social data domain

Dominique Santorelli
610:554 Information Visualization
Fall 2013
Definition of Social Data
! Data produced using social media
platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn, and Flickr
! Social data is a sub sect of public data,
which is information that is available to
the public for a fee or at no charge
! Social data is a result of voluntary active
participation on social media, a public
medium of communication, among a
community of millions of users.
Social Data Users
! Researchers - Data from social media is
publically available about a wide variety of
issues and facilitates comparisons by gender,
age group, and location.
! Companies - Social data provides businesses
with a better understanding of the market and
evolving trends as well as more accurate
responses to customer needs.
! Social Media Users - Users themselves are
increasingly using data visualization tools to
better understand their social media networks
or identify mutual areas of interest.
Clusters of Tools
Visualization tools will be grouped into three
distinct clusters because of the similarities in the
types of visualization:
! Node-link Visualizations
! Geospatial Visualizations
! Timeline Visualizations
Outliers will be grouped together in fourth
category because of their ability to
produce multiple visualizations.
Node-link Visualizations
! Social networks can be effectively displayed as
node-link graph visualization, which display
relationships by placing related data in close physical
proximity and show connections between data using
lines or colors.
! Social network visualization tools primarily use a
force-directed layout.
! Node-link visualizations are often interactive, and
users are able to manipulate the visualization to
redirect the focus toward a particular piece of
information or node.
! If overplotting occurs, the structure of the
visualization can be made more understandable
through filtering techniques.
Node-link Visualization Tools
Gephi
(http://gephi.org/)
NodeXL
(http://nodexl.codeplex.com/)
TouchGraph Facebook Browser
(http://www.touchgraph.com/facebook)
LinkedIn InMap
(http://inmaps.linkedinlabs.com/)
Sonar Solo
(http://sonar.bottlenose.com/)
Node-link Example
Gephi allows the user to create a multi-level graph and interact
with data to display or discover patterns for link and social
network analysis and provides enhanced recognition of patterns
and perceptual monitoring in an interactive medium.
Geospatial Visualizations
! Social data is enriched by geocoding
and provides additional possibilities for
visualization.
! Most current geospatial visualization of
social data displays activity over a map,
and it can be displayed in a variety of
ways, including clusters, a heatmap, or
height bars.
Geospatial Visualization Tools
Twingly Screensaver
(http://www.twingly.com/screensaver)
Maptimize
(http://v3.maptimize.com/)
Geotaggers World Atlas
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/
72157623971287575/)
Geospatial Example
Maptimize - Renders big geolocalized data, such as data from social
media, on a variety of maps. Maptimizes interactive visualization
supports instant filtering based on the users criteria and offers
criteria-based searching directly on the map interface.
Timeline Visualizations
! Many visualization tools use the timestamps
associated with data produced by social media
interfaces to create a topic-centered timeline,
which most often visualizes the frequency of
use of a topic word over time.
! Trending is indicated by the volume of social
data produced about the topic, such as the
number of tweets containing a particular term.
! Timeline visualization tools vary greatly in the
time period they display; some can be
continuously added to while others focus on a
set time or amount of data.
Timeline Visualization Tools
Dipity
(http://www.dipity.com/about)
Twitter StreamGraph
(http://www.neoformix.com/Projects/TwitterStreamGraphs/
view.php)
Revisit
(http://moritz.stefaner.eu/projects/revisit-twitter-
visualization/)
Timeline Visualization Example
Dipity - Allows users to create, share, and collaborate on interactive
timelines that are capable of displaying a variety of digital media.
Timelines are able to integrate video, audio, images, text, links, social
media, location and timestamps into one multimedia timeline that can
be updated in real time.
Multiple Visualizations
! Some social data visualization tools
offer a variety of visualizations within
one system. Because users can create
more than one visualization using the
same social data, these tools often fit in
multiple categories.
! Users can compare several related
visualizations or select the visualization
that allows them to analyze the data
most effectively.
Multiple Visualizations Tools
Truthy
(http://truthy.indiana.edu/)
TweetLevel
(http://tweetlevel.edelman.com/Home.aspx)
Visual.ly
(http://create.visual.ly/)