AcademiaMap-GIV: Geo-based Information Visualization of Scholarly Conversations on Twitter

Abstract

Geo-based Information Visualizations (GIV) allow people to analyze data points based on their related geographic locations. This approach is usually adopted where a large scale geo-referenced dataset is present and users are trying to find a way to examine hidden patterns within this data. One of the emerging trends in GIV is to visualize social media data to show how information flows between users of popular social networking sites. Due to its public nature and the large number of users, most of the visualizations in this area rely on conversational data from Twitter (Twitter.com). In this thesis, we design and implement a web-based interactive GIV system, AcademiaMap-GIV, to visualize online conversations among scholars on Twitter. A formal exploratory user study was also conducted on the target users. The study results demonstrated that most of the study respondents found the features of AcademiaMap-GIV effective in regards to visualizing information of their interests.