Understanding Communication in Social Networks

Understanding Communication in Social Networks: Visualizing Online Social Interactions Mengjiao Fan

Fig.1 screen shots of the integrated visualization interface of social interaction application (a). Screen shots of the interface indicate interactive communication from user's network and the relationship with user's friends (b). The rings in the visualization indicate status updates, comments and friends attention in a selected day. Connections among the rings are based on the similarity parts completed with inward and outward information flow(c). This interface represents a real-time look at the discussions happening on Facebook around the selected topic (d).

Abstract—Interactions with popular social networks such as twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, has challenged the traditional way to communicate and has changed the understanding of conversational and digital lives to some extent. People experience the human-computer interaction in digital world and physical world. Social networks are popular tools for communication, interaction, and information sharing on the Internet. People join, establish social links to friends, and make use of their social links to share information and resources, organize events. We propose a new design for social interaction visualization for exploring communications of social network users. a dynamic visualization interface for exploring the interactions and communication. We discuss this design and its visual strategies for helping users understand their behavior in social networks. Some participants were asked to take participant in two-part comparative activity to evaluate the application. The tasks concern communication network, individual events, activity and activity distribution. During the comparative activities, participants' eye movements, when they were viewing the Social Interaction interfaces, were recorded as well. We compare the record to evaluate the users’ preference of the application. Index terms—Social Network Visualization, Online Interaction Interfaces, User evaluation. 1 INTRODUCTION ●Mengjiao

Fan is with Peking University, e-mail: [email protected].

Manuscript received 31 March 2012; accepted 1 August 2012; posted online 14 October 2012; mailed on 5 October 2012. For information on obtaining reprints of this article, please send e-mail to: [email protected].

A social network is a social structure made up of a set of individuals or organizations and the dyadic ties between these them[1]. The social network perspective provides a clear way of analyzing the structure of whole social entities. Unlike most high schools, colleges, or workplaces, the internet is filled with millions of individuals who are looking to meet other people, to gather and share first-hand information and experiences about interesting lives. The networks 1/4

provide communication, storage and social applications for users. The daily interactions on popular social network sites form a major part of many people’s digital life. In sites, people share pictures and media, WebLogs, as well as express their statements and behaviors. These disparate individual’s activity affects users his or her life style. At the same time, in public or semi-public systems, people share information and ideals. The speed and diversity of interactions in social networks require people to obtain and integrate understandings about the broader impact of the online social activities. In the social networks, people obtain abundant information without selection, which would confuse them sometimes. With development of computer science and technology, the interactions in normal life are different from those in digital life. In this context the largest difference is the logging that happens in digital life Interactions in digital life would be captured and remains available for future inspection. People need a tool to help to see some aspects on this logged data in a convenient way. Therefore, we propose a dynamic visualization interface (The social interaction application) to make this logged data conveniently available. The application can be used to explore individual social network activity over time and help them to form more reasoned opinions about the effect of their social activities. 2 RELATED WORK Social network sites provide possibilities for communication and mutual activities that reduce barriers of time and distance[2]. Digital life based on interactions via the social network sites can obtain the fresh and essential information. The social warmth of all those stray details shouldn't be taken lightly[3]. Cognitive science suggests that interactive and reflective activities are fundamental components of the thinking process, which is essential for decision-making and self-learning. With social network sites becoming popular, the way how people communicate and behave in the social networks, how they respond has changed over time. The social interaction application interface gives users an approach to explore their behaviors to understand the quality and nature of their interaction over time. Individuals can create knowledge in online environments through interaction. The social discord served as a catalyst to the knowledge construction process observed. There are many types of structures, motivations, and applications of online interaction that make the understanding of this communication medium both challenging and exciting[4]. 3 DESIGN REQUIREMENTS We attempt to turn the raw data in Facebook into a thing of beauty which can help people to understand their interactions in their digital life. Integrated visualizations allow users to interact with information in ways that help them realize their specific personality as well as provide ways that users can explore useful information. 4 INTERFACES People share data pieces of content each month completed with web links, news, blog posts, notes, photo albums, medias, etc.) . As a result, users are provided with complicated multi-dimensional platform. We focus on integrating the information flow into a simple structured interface. We propose three visualizations and integrate them to help people to see the logged data in their social networks

conveniently and give a better understanding for their interactions.

Fig.2 interface indicate interactive communication from user's network and the relationship with user's friends. The tree ring clock visualization and the circle visualization are integrated in one interface.

The interface in Figure 2 combines the clock visualization and tree ring visualization. In the tree ring visualization, each ring indicates a selected day in a month. Users can click on the rings to choose the specific day. Individual’s status updates and comments are represented as icons placed on the tree rings according their posting time. The icons are color-coded blue (status updates) and orange (comments) to give users a first-glance overview of the ratio between outward expression and inward feedback reception. The clock visualization gives the more information of the selected day. The interface has expressed the inward and outward flow of communication. The circles and interrelated bars in the visualization indicate status updates (inner ring), comments (middle ring), friends (outer ring)[5] .We also connected the relevant friends who share the similar comments in a topic. Users can gain the information with who they pay close attention to same hot spots. The more connections, the more similarities. With the comparison of the level of connection and interaction among friends, users can realize the relationships with others. There are three visualizations in an interface. In the interface, we have the overview of the tree visualizations on the left while the whole visualization which is selected to see more details on the right. We also number the visualizations to make interfaces clear.

Fig.3 the rings in the visualization indicate status updates, comments and friends attention in a selected day. Connections among the rings are based on the similarity parts completed with inward and outward information flow. Users who share the same information would be

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connected. In the middle of the interface, we filter one of the hot spot users share a lot to see as an example.

The rings in the circle visualization (Fig.3) indicate status updates, comments and friends attention (visiting times) in a selected single day. The size of the rings depicts the level of activities in the network. The larger the ring, the more highly active. The connections among them which mean similarity have been constructed because of sharing the top hot discussion, give the same comments, and share the same visiting friends. The circle visualization (Fig.3) follows the visualization of figure 2. In the Figure 3, we pay more attention to the connection of the users. The circle visualization (Fig.3) gives a clearer overview of the similar part among the users. Users who talk about the same hot spots would mention the same keyword in the comments. With the frequency of the keywords emerging, the connections can be marked among them. Therefore, the circle visualization can help to explore inward feedback and outward reflection.

Fig.4 This interface represents a real-time look at the discussions happening on Facebook around the selected topic.

Single wordcloud visualization indicates an individual's Facebook status updates and comments in a 2D list. This interface (Fig.4), where the topics are sorted represents a real-time look at the discussions happening on Facebook around the selected topic (style, friends, point etc.).Users are aggregated in a single location, allowing users to quickly understand the current topics, trends, and stories. What is more, users can classify themselves to the most popular topics. Through this interface, users can easily reveal the major discussion threads, as well as explore each related users conveniently. 5 EVALUATION: SOCIAL INTERACTION APPLICATION We designed a series of experiments to evaluate the usability of the interface among Facebook users. In the next section, we describe the study hypotheses, subjects and settings, evaluation method, results and analysis. 5.1 HYPOTHESES Based on prior research, we hold the hypothesis for our application evaluation: the Social Interaction application can help understand online lives in social network websites through visualizing interpersonal activities and improve users' self-identified level of interaction. 5.2 SUBJECTS AND SETTINGS We find 20 Facebook users who range in age from 20 to 50.The participants have a wide variety of different backgrounds. We also

conduct an eye movement analysis. 5.3 EVALUATION METHOD The subjects were asked to participate in two-part comparative activity. All the participants were required to complete evaluation twice. In the first time, they were viewing the raw data from Facebook while viewing data using the Social Interaction application. The tasks concern communication network, individual events, activity and activity distribution. During the comparative activities, participants' eye movements, when they were viewing the Social Interaction interfaces, were recorded as well. Participants were asked to complete short questionnaire survey before the tasks while 15-mininute audio-recorded semi-structured interviews were conducted after that. 5.4 RESULTS AND ANALYSIS Over half of the participants gave the different answers for the questionnaire survey after exploring their data using the Social Integration visualization. However, some changes minor but some change a lot. The application provides them with a clear representation of their online social activity and communication with others. 6 DISCUSSIONS AND CONCLUSIONS In the paper we present the design and preliminary evaluation of The social interaction application, the interface that visualized the interaction between the popular social network platform and the structure of the individual social network. The utility of the application integrated the awareness and understanding user’s online communications. The design integrated the three ring interfaces and allowed users to understand their own specific reference for the platform and the effect of the digital life for individuals. Through the visualization, it is convenient of users to see the logged data in the social networks and have reasoned and effective understanding of their interaction in the digital life. What is the real difference between the interfaces? How can we help users to meet multiple times with and without the different visualization? I intend to address issues in future iterations of our work through the use of more search features to integrate all the interfaces. The next step is to begin a large and more integrated scale user-experienced study in order to thoroughly examine how social network platform interface affects the communication and relationship. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors wish to thank Prof Huub van de Wetering and Prof Xiaoru Yuan for inspiring discussion. REFERENCES [1]

Christo Wilson, Bryce Boe, Alessandra Sala, Krishna P.N., Ben Y. Zhao, User interactions in social networks and their implications, EuroSys '09 Proceedings of the 4th ACM European conference on Computer systems ,pp 205-218,2009 [2] Steven Johnson, How Twitter Will Change The Way We Live, Time, Vol. 173 Issue 23, pp.32-37, 6/15/2009. [3] Nicole B. Ellison, Cliff Lampe, Charles Steinfield, FEATURE: 3/4

Social network sites and society: current trends and future possibilities, interactions, Volume 16 Issue 1, pp. 6-9, January + February 2009 [4] Kanuka, H. & Anderson, T. Online social interchange, discord and knowledge construction. Journal of Distance Education. 13(1), pp.57-74.1998 [5] Heng Chen, Aisling Kelliher, Conversational Lives: Visualizing Interpersonal Online Social Interactions, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 6778/2011, pp241-250, 2011

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