Exploring Asynchronous Online Discussions through Hierarchical Visualisation

Abstract

We introduce a highly customizable social visualization system for exploring online discussions through visual representations of conversation threads. The tool provides users with an interface that allows the navigation and exploration through the often intricate structure of online discussions. Apart from being useful for readers and participants of these forums, the interactive capabilities of our system makes it appealing for social researchers interested in understanding the phenomena and intrinsic structure of online conversations. We also show a use case where we applied the tool to visualize discussions from Slashdot.org, showing its capabilities to represent new, in this case Slashdot specific, metrics. The visual representation of discussion threads has arisen as a complement for supporting investigation,as it helps to understand such large amount of information and contributes to the generation of new research ideas.