skip to main content
10.1145/2024288.2024344acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication Pagesi-knowConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

A visual analytics approach to dynamic social networks

Published: 07 September 2011 Publication History

Abstract

The visualization and analysis of dynamic networks have become increasingly important in several fields, for instance sociology or economics. The dynamic and multi-relational nature of this data poses the challenge of understanding both its topological structure and how it changes over time. In this paper we propose a visual analytics approach for analyzing dynamic networks that integrates: a dynamic layout with user-controlled trade-off between stability and consistency; three temporal views based on different combinations of node-link diagrams (layer superimposition, layer juxtaposition, and two-and-a-half-dimensional view); the visualization of social network analysis metrics; and specific interaction techniques for tracking node trajectories and node connectivity over time. This integration of visual, interactive, and automatic methods supports the multi-faceted analysis of dynamically changing networks.

References

[1]
Andrews, K., Wohlfahrt, M., and Wurzinger, G. 2009. Visual graph comparison. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Information Visualization (Barcelona, 15--17 July 2009). IV'09. IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA, USA, 62--67.
[2]
Barnes, J. and Hut, P. 1986. A hierarchical O(n Log n) force calculation algorithm. Nature. 324(4).
[3]
Bender-deMoll, S. and McFarland, D. A. 2006. The art and science of dynamic network visualization. Journal of Social Structure. 7 (2), 2006.
[4]
Bertin, J. and Daru, M. 2001. Matrix theory of graphics. Information Design Journal. 10 (1), 5--19.
[5]
Biedl, T., Lubiw, A., and Spriggs, M. J. 2005. Morphing planar graphs while preserving edge directions. In Proceedings of the 13th International Symposium on Graph Drawing (Limerick, Ireland, September 2005). GD'05. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Germany, 13--24.
[6]
Brandes, U. and Corman, S. R. 2003. Visual unrolling of the network evolution and the analysis of dynamic discourse. Information Visualization. 2 (1), 40--50.
[7]
Brandes, U. and Wagner, D. 1997. A Bayesian paradigm for dynamic graph layout. In Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Graph Drawing (Rome, Italy, September 1997). GD'97. Springer, London, UK, 236--247.
[8]
Branke, J. 2001. Dynamic graph drawing. Springer Lecture Notes In Computer Science. 2025, 228--246.
[9]
Bridgeman, S. and Tamassia, R. 2002. A user study in similarity measures for graph drawing, Journal of Graph Algorithms and Applications. 6 (3), 225--254.
[10]
Carley, K. M. 2003. Dynamic networks analysis. In Summary of the NRC workshop on Social Network Modeling and Analysis.
[11]
Chen, C. 2005. Top 10 unsolved information visualization problems. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications. 25 (4), 12--16.
[12]
Coleman, M. K. 1993. Aesthetics-based graph layout for human consumption, Master Thesis, University of California Los Angeles, USA.
[13]
Correa, C. D. and Ma, K.-L. 2011. Visualizing social networks. In Social Network Data Analytics. C. Aggarwal Ed., Springer, New York, NY, USA.
[14]
Di Battista, G., Eades, P., Tamassia, R., and Tollis, I. G. 1994. Algorithms for drawing graphs: an annotated bibliography. Computational Geometry: Theory and Application. 4 (5), 235--282.
[15]
Diehl, S., Görg, C., and Kerren, A. 2001. Preserving the mental map using foresighted layout. In Proceedings of Joint Eurographics - IEEE TCVG Symposium on Visualization (Ascona, Switzerland, May 2001). VisSym'01. Springer Verlag, Vienna, Austria, 175--184.
[16]
Dwyer, T. and Gallagher, D. R. 2004. Visualising changes in fund manager holdings in two and a half-dimensions. Information Visualization. 3 (4), 227--244.
[17]
Eades, P. and Lai, W. 1991. Preserving the mental map of a diagram. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Computational Graphics and Visualization Techniques (Sesimbra, Portugal, September 1991). COMPUGRAPHICS '91. Elsevier, 24--33.
[18]
Erten, C., Harding, P. J., Kobourov, S. G., Wampler, K., and Yee, G. 2004. GraphAEL: graph animations with evolving layouts. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 2912, 98--110.
[19]
Erten, C., Kobourov, S. G., and Pitta, C. 2003. Intersection-free morphing of planar graphs. In Proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Graph Drawing (Perugia, Italy, September 2003). GD'03. Springer-Verlag, London, UK, 320--331.
[20]
Freeman, L. C. 2000. Visualizing social networks. Journal of Social Structure. 1 (1).
[21]
Freire M., Plaisant C., Shneiderman B., and Golbeck J. 2010. ManyNets: an interface for multiple network analysis and visualization. In Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. CHI'10. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 213--222.
[22]
Friederich, C. and Houle, M. E. 2001. Graph drawing in motion II. In Proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Graph Drawing (Vienna, Austria, September 2010). GD'01. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Germany, 220--231.
[23]
Frishman, Y. and Tal, A. 2004. Dynamic drawing of clustered graphs. In Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization (October 2004). InfoVis'04. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA, USA, 191--198.
[24]
Fruchterman, T. M. J. and Reingold, E. M. 1991. Graph drawing by force-directed placement. Software - Practice & Experience. 21 (11), 1129--1164.
[25]
Ghoniem, M., Fakete, J.-D., and Castagliola, P. 2004. A comparison of the readability of graphs using node-link diagrams and matrix-based representation. In Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization (October 2004). InfoVis'04. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA, USA.
[26]
Groh G., Hanstein H., and Wörnld W. 2009. Interactively visualizing dynamic social networks with dyson. In Proc. of the IUI'09 Workshop on Visual Interfaces to the Social and the Semantic Web. ACM, New York, NY, USA.
[27]
Heer, J., Card, S. K., and Landay, J. A. 2005. Prefuse: a toolkit for interactive information visualization. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. CHI '05. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 421--430.
[28]
Herman, I., Melançon, G., and Scott Marshall, M. 2000. Graph visualization and navigation in information visualization: a survey. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. 6 (1), 24--43.
[29]
Kamada, T. and Kawai, S. 1989. An algorithm for drawing general undirected graphs. Information Processing Letters. 31 (1), 7--15.
[30]
Kumar, G. and Garland, M. 2006. Visual exploration of complex time-varying graphs, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. 12 (5). Research Triangle Park, NC, USA, 805--812.
[31]
Lee, Y.-Y., Lin, C.-C., and Yen, H.-C. 2006. Mental map preserving graph drawing using simulated annealing. In Proceedings of the 2006 Asia-Pacific Symposium on Information Visualisation, (2006). Australian Computer Society, Darlinghurst, Australia.
[32]
Loubier, E. and Dousset, B. 2008. Temporal and relational data representation by graph morphing. In Proceedings of the European Safety and Reliability Conference (Valencia, Spain, September 2008). ESREL'08. Taylor & Francis Group, London, UK.
[33]
McGrath, C. J. and Blythe, J. 2004. Do you see what I want you to see? The effects of motion and spatial layout on viewers' perceptions of graph structure. Journal of Social Structure. 5 (2).
[34]
Misue, K., Eades, P., Lai., W., and Sugiyama, K. 1995. Layout adjustment and the mental map. Journal of Visual Languages & Computing. 6 (2), 183--210.
[35]
Moody, J., McFarland, D., and Bender-deMoll, S. 2005. Dynamic network visu1ization. American Journal of Sociology. 110 (4), 1206--1241.
[36]
Moreno, J. L. 1934. Who shall survive? A new approach to the problem of human interrelations. Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series, 58, 22--66.
[37]
North, S. C. 1996. Incremental layout in DynaDAG. Lecture Notes in Computer Sciences. 1027, 409--418.
[38]
Perer, A. and Shneiderman, B. 2008. Integrating statistics and visualization: case studies of gaining clarity during exploratory data analysis. In Proceedings of 26th Annual SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 265--274.
[39]
Pohl, M., Reitz, F., and Birke, P. 2008. As time goes by: integrated visualization and analysis of dynamic networks. In Proceedings of the Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces. ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 372--375.
[40]
Purchase H. C., Hoggan E., and Görg, C. 2006. How important is the "mental map"? An empirical investigation of a dynamic graph layout algorithm. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Graph Drawing. GD'06. Springer-Verlag, Berlin/Heidelberg, Germany, 184--195.
[41]
Saffrey, P. and Purchase, H. C. 2008. The "mental map" versus "static aesthetic" compromise in dynamic graphs: a user study. In Proceedings of the 9th Australasian Conference on User Interface. Australian Computer Society Inc., Darlinghurst, Australia, 85--93.
[42]
Sarodnick, F. and Brau, H. 2006. Methoden der Usability Evaluation. Hans Huber, Bern, CH.
[43]
Tominski, C., Abello, J., and Schumann, H. 2009. CGV-An interactive graph visualization system. Computer Graphics. 33, 6 (December 2009), 660--678.
[44]
Tufte, E. R. 1983. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Graphics Press, Cheshire, CT, USA.
[45]
Wasserman, S., and Faust, K. 1994. Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
[46]
Yang, X., Asur, S., Parthasarathy, S., and Mehta, S. 2008. A visual-analytic toolkit for dynamic interaction graphs. In Proceedings of the 14th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowldege Discovery and Data Mining. ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 1016--1024.

Cited By

View all
  • (2023)Data-Task-Visualisation Analysis based on Top mHealth AppsProceedings of the 35th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference10.1145/3638380.3638397(231-244)Online publication date: 2-Dec-2023
  • (2023)Information Visualization (InfoVis) in the Decision ProcessMarketing and Smart Technologies10.1007/978-981-19-9099-1_8(95-109)Online publication date: 12-May-2023
  • (2022)Measuring and mapping long-term changes in migration flows using population-scale family tree dataCartography and Geographic Information Science10.1080/15230406.2021.201141949:2(154-170)Online publication date: 19-Jan-2022
  • Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Reviews

George Popescu

This paper explores visualization techniques for understanding the dynamics of social networks. Its main contribution is represented by integrating interactive visualization techniques with payout algorithms and metrics. The paper highlights distinguishable solutions from previous work. Its strong points include a solid problem formation, a presentation of complex visualization issues, and strong argumentation for the design choice, particularly the views. Figures complement the text to justify the concepts--for instance, the juxtaposition of views in a dynamic network. The paper offers a clear and comprehensive understanding of the visualization method. Online Computing Reviews Service

Access critical reviews of Computing literature here

Become a reviewer for Computing Reviews.

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences
i-KNOW '11: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Technologies
September 2011
306 pages
ISBN:9781450307321
DOI:10.1145/2024288
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 07 September 2011

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. dynamic layout
  2. dynamic networks
  3. graph drawing
  4. information visualization
  5. interaction
  6. social network analysis
  7. visual analytics

Qualifiers

  • Research-article

Conference

i-KNOW '11

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 77 of 238 submissions, 32%

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)18
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1
Reflects downloads up to 13 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2023)Data-Task-Visualisation Analysis based on Top mHealth AppsProceedings of the 35th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference10.1145/3638380.3638397(231-244)Online publication date: 2-Dec-2023
  • (2023)Information Visualization (InfoVis) in the Decision ProcessMarketing and Smart Technologies10.1007/978-981-19-9099-1_8(95-109)Online publication date: 12-May-2023
  • (2022)Measuring and mapping long-term changes in migration flows using population-scale family tree dataCartography and Geographic Information Science10.1080/15230406.2021.201141949:2(154-170)Online publication date: 19-Jan-2022
  • (2021)GraphStateVis: Interactive Visual Analysis of Qubit Graph States and their Stabilizer Groups2021 IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE)10.1109/QCE52317.2021.00057(378-384)Online publication date: Oct-2021
  • (2020)A Visual Analytics Framework for Contrastive Network Analysis2020 IEEE Conference on Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST)10.1109/VAST50239.2020.00010(48-59)Online publication date: Oct-2020
  • (2020)Static and Dynamic Social Network Models for the Analysis of Transshipment in Illegal Fishing2020 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data)10.1109/BigData50022.2020.9378202(2563-2568)Online publication date: 10-Dec-2020
  • (2019)Choreographien der ExistenzBIOS – Zeitschrift für Biographieforschung, Oral History und Lebensverlaufsanalysen10.3224/bios.v30i1-2.0630:1-2/2017(60-75)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2019
  • (2019)Dynamic Network PlaidProceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3290605.3300360(1-14)Online publication date: 2-May-2019
  • (2019)A Visual Approach for the Comparative Analysis of Character Networks in Narrative Texts2019 IEEE Pacific Visualization Symposium (PacificVis)10.1109/PacificVis.2019.00037(247-256)Online publication date: Apr-2019
  • (2019)Visual Analytics: A Comprehensive OverviewIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2019.29237367(81555-81573)Online publication date: 2019
  • Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media