Social visualization

Last updated

Social visualization is an interdisciplinary intersection of information visualization to study creating intuitive depictions of massive and complex social interactions for social purposes. [1] By visualizing those interactions made not only in the cyberspace including social media but also the physical world, captured through sensors, it can reveal overall patterns of social memes or it highlights one individual's implicit behaviors in diverse social spaces. In particular, it is the study “primarily concerned with the visualization of text, audio, and visual interaction data to uncover social connections and interaction patterns in online and physical spaces. [2] ACM Computing Classification System has classified this field of study under the category of Human-Centered Computing (1st) and Information Visualization (2nd) as a third level concept in a general sense. [3]

Contents

Overview

Social visualization is a subset of information visualization. According to Karrie G. Karahalios and Fernanda Viégas, one of the most distinctive aspect of social visualization is that "social visualization focuses on people, the groups they form, their patterns, their interactions, and how they related to their communities." rather than other digital information. In this perspective, there are many challenges and questions drives this field of study to the interdisciplinary research context, ranging from the analytical (what are the most relevant and appropriate data and is it right to use data in terms of privacy?) to the critical (what do the patterns imply and does it allow us to demonstrate it publicly? ) to the creative (how can we both accurately represent the implication the data and also express its intrinsic meaning through fundamental visual design principles) perspectives. [1] One of the common misperception of social visualization is that the relationship between Network Analysis or Social Network Visualization and Social Visualization; they are loosely related. Social network visualization is a traditional form of social visualization. [4] It is more appropriate to consider in the context of visualization in social sciences. i.e. John Snow's maps of the 1854 cholera outbreak in Soho and Charles Booth's maps of poverty in London 1889 Due to the interdisciplinary nature, research methodology in this field is truly diversified from researchers to researchers; they adopt related technology used in computer science from data mining, machine learning, natural language processing to statistical models widely recognized in social science/communication, so that they could capture, process, analyze and represent its essence.[ citation needed ]

Historical background

There has been a long history of visualization in a social science perspective, which enables us to witness the power of social visualizations and their implications. However, changes in visualization methodology and tools in the last few decades are fundamentally affecting the way in which the social sciences and computational social science are researched, and in which studies are communicated (Olson 1997 [5] ). These changes have been largely initiated by the rapid development of computing power and visualization technology since the 1980s, resulting in the availability of affordable computing and visualization. Many researchers had contributed to define and understand the potential power of this field with emerging media and information. In this regard, McCormick et al. indicates a visualization as offering "a method for seeing the unseen. (McCormick et al. 1989) [6] " After that, many computer scientists dedicated their academic careers for nurturing the field of social visualization with strong emphasis on applying computational methods.[ citation needed ]

See also

Related Research Articles

Personal information management (PIM) is the study and implementation of the activities that people perform in order to acquire or create, store, organize, maintain, retrieve, and use informational items such as documents, web pages, and email messages for everyday use to complete tasks and fulfill a person's various roles ; it is information management with intrapersonal scope.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WIMP (computing)</span> Style of human-computer interaction

In human–computer interaction, WIMP stands for "windows, icons, menus, pointer", denoting a style of interaction using these elements of the user interface. Other expansions are sometimes used, such as substituting "mouse" and "mice" for menus, or "pull-down menu" and "pointing" for pointer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ben Shneiderman</span> American computer scientist

Ben Shneiderman is an American computer scientist, a Distinguished University Professor in the University of Maryland Department of Computer Science, which is part of the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences at the University of Maryland, College Park, and the founding director (1983-2000) of the University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Lab. He conducted fundamental research in the field of human–computer interaction, developing new ideas, methods, and tools such as the direct manipulation interface, and his eight rules of design.

Backchannel is the use of networked computers to maintain a real-time online conversation alongside the primary group activity or live spoken remarks. The term was coined from the linguistics term to describe listeners' behaviours during verbal communication.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fernanda Viégas</span> Brazilian-American computer scientist (born 1971)

Fernanda Bertini Viégas is a Brazilian computer scientist and graphical designer, whose work focuses on the social, collaborative and artistic aspects of information visualization.

The ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) series of academic conferences is generally considered the most prestigious in the field of human–computer interaction and is one of the top-ranked conferences in computer science. It is hosted by ACM SIGCHI, the Special Interest Group on computer–human interaction. CHI has been held annually since 1982 and attracts thousands of international attendees. CHI 2020, which was originally planned to take place on April, was cancelled due to COVID-19, and CHI 2021 was held online as a virtual conference chaired by Yoshifumi Kitamura and Aaron Quigley. CHI 2021 “making waves, combining strengths” was originally scheduled to take place in Yokohama.

Group information management (GIM) is an extension of personal information management (PIM) "as it functions in more public spheres" as a result of peoples' efforts to share and co-manage information, and has been a topic of study for researchers in PIM, human–computer interaction (HCI), and computer supported cooperative work (CSCW). People acquire, organize, maintain, retrieve and use information items to support individual needs, but these PIM activities are often embedded in group or organizational contexts and performed with sharing in mind. The act of sharing moves personal information into spheres of group activity and also creates tensions that shape what and how the information is shared. The practice and the study of GIM focuses on this interaction between personal information and group contexts.

Susanne Boll is a Professor for Media Informatics and Multimedia Systems in the Department of Computing Science at the University of Oldenburg, Germany. and is a member of the board at the research institute OFFIS. She is a member of SIGMM and SIGCHI of the ACM as well as the German Informatics Society GI. She founded and directs the HCI Lab at the University of Oldenburg and OFFIS.

Steve Whittaker is a Professor in human-computer interaction at the University of California Santa Cruz. He is best known for his research at the intersection of computer science and social science in particular on computer mediated communication and personal information management. He is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and winner of the CSCW 2018 "Lasting Impact" award. He also received a Lifetime Research Achievement Award from SIGCHI, is a Member of the SIGCHI Academy. He is Editor of the journal Human-Computer Interaction.

Social information seeking is a field of research that involves studying situations, motivations, and methods for people seeking and sharing information in participatory online social sites, such as Yahoo! Answers, Answerbag, WikiAnswers and Twitter as well as building systems for supporting such activities. Highly related topics involve traditional and virtual reference services, information retrieval, information extraction, and knowledge representation.

Ed Huai-Hsin Chi is a Taiwanese American computer scientist and research scientist at Google, known for his early work in applying the theory of information scent to predict usability of websites.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Daniel Fekete</span>

Jean-Daniel Fekete is a French computer scientist.

Social navigation is a form of social computing introduced by Paul Dourish and Matthew Chalmers in 1994, who defined it as when "movement from one item to another is provoked as an artifact of the activity of another or a group of others". According to later research in 2002, "social navigation exploits the knowledge and experience of peer users of information resources" to guide users in the information space, and that it is becoming more difficult to navigate and search efficiently with all the digital information available from the World Wide Web and other sources. Studying others' navigational trails and understanding their behavior can help improve one's own search strategy by guiding them to make more informed decisions based on the actions of others.

Animal–Computer Interaction (ACI) is a field of research for the design and use of technology with, for and by animals covering different kinds of animals from wildlife, zoo and domesticated animals in different roles. It emerged from, and was heavily influenced by, the discipline of Human–computer interaction (HCI). As the field expanded, it has become increasingly multi-disciplinary, incorporating techniques and research from disciplines such as artificial intelligence (AI), requirements engineering (RE), and veterinary science.

Feminist HCI is a subfield of human-computer interaction (HCI) that applies feminist theory, critical theory and philosophy to social topics in HCI, including scientific objectivity, ethical values, data collection, data interpretation, reflexivity, and unintended consequences of HCI software. The term was originally used in 2010 by Shaowen Bardzell, and although the concept and original publication are widely cited, as of 2020 Bardzell's proposed frameworks have been rarely used since.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacob O. Wobbrock</span> American computer scientist

Jacob O. Wobbrock is a Professor in the University of Washington Information School and, by courtesy, in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. He is Director of the ACE Lab, Associate Director and founding Co-Director Emeritus of the CREATE research center, and a founding member of the DUB Group and the MHCI+D degree program.

Eric Gilbert is an American computer scientist and the John Derby Evans Associate Professor in the University of Michigan School of Information, with a courtesy appointment in CSE. He is known for his work designing and analyzing social media.

Batya Friedman is an American professor in the University of Washington Information School. She is also an adjunct professor in the Paul G. Allen School Computer Science and Engineering and adjunct professor in the Department of Human-Centered Design and Engineering, where she directs the Value Sensitive Design Research Lab. She received her PhD in learning sciences from the University of California, Berkeley School of Education in 1988, and has an undergraduate degree from Berkeley in computer science and mathematics.

Jofish Kaye is an American and British scientist specializing in human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence. He runs interaction design and user research at anthem.ai, and is an editor of Personal & Ubiquitous Computing.

Steven Mark Drucker is an American computer scientist who studies how to help people understand data, and communicate their insights to others. He is a Partner at Microsoft Research, where he also serves as the Research Manager of the VIDA group. Drucker is an affiliate professor at the University of Washington Computer Science and Engineering Department.

References

  1. 1 2 "MAS 961: Social Visualization". Smg.media.mit.edu. 1993-10-29. Retrieved 2013-10-24.
  2. http://www.chi2006.org/docs/workshops/karahaliosCFP.pdf [ bare URL PDF ]
  3. "The 2012 ACM Computing Classification System — Association for Computing Machinery". Acm.org. Retrieved 2013-10-24.
  4. Karahalios, Karrie G.; Viégas, Fernanda B. (2006-04-21). "Social visualization". CHI '06 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems - CHI EA '06. Dl.acm.org. p. 1667. doi:10.1145/1125451.1125758. ISBN   1595932984. S2CID   33989930.
  5. Olsen, Kai A.; Korfhage, Robert R.; Sochats, Kenneth M.; Spring, Michael B.; Williams, James G. (1993). "Visualization of a document collection: The vibe system". Information Processing. 29: 69–81. doi:10.1016/0306-4573(93)90024-8.
  6. Defanti, T.A.; Brown, M.D.; McCormick, B.H. (1989). "Visualization: Expanding scientific and engineering research opportunities". Computer. 22 (8): 12–16. doi:10.1109/2.35195. S2CID   17357523.

Further reading