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A Generalized Force-Directed Layout for Multiplex Sociograms

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Social Informatics (SocInfo 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 11185))

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Abstract

Multiplex networks are defined by the presence of multiple edge types. As a consequence, it is hard to produce a single visualization of a network revealing both the structure of each edge type and their mutual relationships: multiple visualization strategies are possible, depending on how each edge type should influence the position of the nodes in the sociogram. In this paper we introduce multiforce, a force-directed layout for multiplex networks where both intra-layer and inter-layer relationships among nodes are used to compute node coordinates. Despite its simplicity, our algorithm can reproduce the main existing approaches to draw multiplex sociograms, and also supports a new intermediate type of layout. Our experiments on real data show that multiforce enables layered visualizations where each layer represents an edge type, nodes are well aligned across layers and the internal layout of each layer highlights the structure of the corresponding edge type.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In theory inter-layer forces can also be used to visualize more general networks, where edges can cross layers, but in this work we focus on multiplex networks.

  2. 2.

    https://cran.r-project.org/package=multinet.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Prof. Ken Wakita for his comments on an early version of this manuscript, and Prof. Mats Lind for insightful discussions. The work by Matteo Magnani has been funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 732027.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of New Sciences and Technologies, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

    Zahra Fatemi & Mostafa Salehi

  2. InfoLab, Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Matteo Magnani

Authors
  1. Zahra Fatemi
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  2. Mostafa Salehi
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  3. Matteo Magnani
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Correspondence to Matteo Magnani .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Koblenz, Koblenz, Germany

    Steffen Staab

  2. National Research University Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Olessia Koltsova

  3. National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia

    Dmitry I. Ignatov

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Fatemi, Z., Salehi, M., Magnani, M. (2018). A Generalized Force-Directed Layout for Multiplex Sociograms. In: Staab, S., Koltsova, O., Ignatov, D. (eds) Social Informatics. SocInfo 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11185. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01129-1_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01129-1_13

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