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January 15, 2004
Visualizing Social Networks
Posted by Clay Shirky
Great overview of
visual analysis of social networks over the years, from the hand drawn

(Friendship choices among 4th graders)
to the computer generated

(Social support network of a homeless woman.)
to the interactive

(Women's attendance at social events)
Computers have been used to do the actual drawing for a number of years. But, more recently, the network research community has shown a tendency to construct and share screen-based images instead of relying entirely on the production and distribution of printed pages. This new approach facilitates the use of color and animation. Currently it offers enough flexibility to allow viewers to begin to interact with the images they receive.
[...]
Future developments will undoubtedly extend current trends. Network analysts already have made considerable progress in developing programs for computation (Freeman, 1988). And, as I have shown in this paper, we have made progress in developing programs for visualization. We can look forward to similar progress in developing database programs designed to facilitate the storage and retrieval of social network data. But the real breakthrough will occur when we develop a single program that can integrate these three kinds of tools into a single program. Only then will we be able to access network data sets and both compute and visualize their structural properties quickly and easily.
Comments (4)
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1. Evan Martin on January 15, 2004 6:03 PM writes...
Tamara Munzner's dissertation discusses different approaches to visualization software.
Permalink to Comment2. Valdis Krebs on January 16, 2004 10:02 AM writes...
> But the real breakthrough will occur when we develop
> a single program that can integrate these three kinds
> of tools into a single program. Only then will we be
> able to access network data sets and both compute
> and visualize their structural properties
> quickly and easily.
InFLOW has done this since version 1 on Win 3.1 in 1993!
http://www.orgnet.com/inflow3.html
Permalink to Comment3. Nick Levay on January 20, 2004 11:44 AM writes...
I just posted a collection of graphs reviewing the activity present in the MemeStreams community during 2003. More information can be found in the URL's thread.
Permalink to Comment4. Beth Fulmer on January 22, 2004 8:59 PM writes...
I know a site called itsnotwhatyouknow has a visualization tool for social networks. it plots your network on a map. cool stuff
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