social circles - marcos weskamp

"In that Empire, the Art of cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Disproportionated Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds built a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided accurately with it."

Jorge Luis Borges, ‘Del rigor en la ciencia’, 1960

Social Circles intends to partially reveal the social networks that emerge in mailing lists. The idea was to visualize in near real-time the social hierarchies and the main subjects they address. When subscribing to a mailing you never know who the principals are, how many people are listening or what subjects they are talking about. It's like entering a meeting room with plenty of people in the darkness and then having to learn who is who by just listening to their voices.
Social Circles does not pretend to be a statistical application, but rather aims to raise the lights in that room just enough to let you enhance your perception of what’s happening. At a glance it allows an easy way of grasping the whole situation by highlighting who is participating, who is "visually" central to that group, and displaying the topics everyone is talking about. How does the list structure itself? Is it moderated? Is it chaotic?

new!

DYI social circles

Mail inboxes, Mail archives, Mail clients that are able to display threaded views of incoming messages are very informative, but not really expressive of the underlying social patterns. Understanding the overall structure of a social group influences the way we might behave and express ourselves inside of that network.

When entering a discussion in meatspace, as contrasted with cyberspace, we perceive an unmeasurable amount of information that affects the way we involve ourselves with that group. Our speech and behavior adjusts with subtle changes in perceived environments. We pause, self-censor and moderate our pattern of communication when entering a conference room with 500 strangers in suit and tie. Similarly we are more relaxed and informal when entering a small bar where social interaction is more colloquial and random.

All of that is not true when subscribing to a mailing list. If we want to understand the inner workings of that group, all we can do is "lurk" and slowly we start associating each name and email addresses popping into our inbox with a topic or a tone until we get a general idea of accepted list behavior: it's protocols, moderators, and group dynamics.

Social Circles does not address all of the above points to perfection - to do so, larger datasets and more powerful visualization algorithms would be necessary. Still, with limited, light data flowing in near real-time from the lists, it is possible to represent the current state of those networks and help users understand the overall structure of them.

Every 5 minutes, new messages are retrieved from the mail server, parsed, and all relevant data is stripped out and stored in a database. By default, every email we send carries a unique id. In case it is a reply to another email, it also contains internal references to the thread it references. When a dataset of a particular mailing list is retrieved from the database, an algorithm links every message with their corresponding threads and presents a visual graph of that social network.

The rules are: When a message is received, if the sender does not exist in the graph yet, then create it. If it does exist already, then increase its circumference diameter. The more messages from a particular person are found in a dataset, the bigger that person's node will be displayed on screen.

A Key feature for this diagram is the absolute position of each node in the graph. If any other person in the graph replied an email to that particular person, a "visibility" point is rewarded, and the individual node is moved towards the center of the group. Every time someone replies to a mail thread, a line is plotted connecting both nodes, implying there was communication between those two persons. A socially central person in the graph will be the one that sits the closest to the center. The loudest person will be the one with the biggest circumference.

concept, design & frontend coding:
  Marcos Weskamp

backend coding
  Marcos Weskamp
  Dan Albritton

Donath, J. Karahalios, K. Viégas, F. 1999. Visualizing conversations

Berthold, M. et al. 1997. Clustering on the Net: Applying an autoassociative neural network to computer-mediated discussions

Freeman, L. 2000. Visualizing Social Networks

Erickson, T. 2003. Designing Visualizations of Social Activity: Six Claims [pdf]

Erickson, T. and Kellogg, 2002. Social Translucence: Using Minimalist Visualizations of Social Activity to Support Collective Interaction. [pdf]

Susani, M. 2002. Mapping communication

Barabási, A. 2002. Linked: The New Science of Networks

Buchanan, M. 2002. Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks

Benyon, D. Hook,K. 2003. Designing Information Spaces: The Social Navigation Approach

Dodge, M. 1999. Cyber Geography Research

Minar, N. 1999. Visualing the crowds at a web site

[2003-12-26] - published
[2004-01-01] - featured at rhizome.org's ArtBase
[2004-02-01] - finalist at flash in the can festival
[2004-05-06] - DYI social circles published



		"In that Empire, the Art of cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Disproportionated Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds built a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided accurately with it." Jorge Luis Borges, ‘Del rigor en la ciencia’, 1960 concept Social Circles intends to partially reveal the social networks that emerge in mailing lists. The idea was to visualize in near real-time the social hierarchies and the main subjects they address. When subscribing to a mailing you never know who the principals are, how many people are listening or what subjects they are talking about. It's like entering a meeting room with plenty of people in the darkness and then having to learn who is who by just listening to their voices. Social Circles does not pretend to be a statistical application, but rather aims to raise the lights in that room just enough to let you enhance your perception of what’s happening. At a glance it allows an easy way of grasping the whole situation by highlighting who is participating, who is "visually" central to that group, and displaying the topics everyone is talking about. How does the list structure itself? Is it moderated? Is it chaotic? new! DYI social circles brief Mail inboxes, Mail archives, Mail clients that are able to display threaded views of incoming messages are very informative, but not really expressive of the underlying social patterns. Understanding the overall structure of a social group influences the way we might behave and express ourselves inside of that network. When entering a discussion in meatspace, as contrasted with cyberspace, we perceive an unmeasurable amount of information that affects the way we involve ourselves with that group. Our speech and behavior adjusts with subtle changes in perceived environments. We pause, self-censor and moderate our pattern of communication when entering a conference room with 500 strangers in suit and tie. Similarly we are more relaxed and informal when entering a small bar where social interaction is more colloquial and random. All of that is not true when subscribing to a mailing list. If we want to understand the inner workings of that group, all we can do is "lurk" and slowly we start associating each name and email addresses popping into our inbox with a topic or a tone until we get a general idea of accepted list behavior: it's protocols, moderators, and group dynamics. Social Circles does not address all of the above points to perfection - to do so, larger datasets and more powerful visualization algorithms would be necessary. Still, with limited, light data flowing in near real-time from the lists, it is possible to represent the current state of those networks and help users understand the overall structure of them. how it works Every 5 minutes, new messages are retrieved from the mail server, parsed, and all relevant data is stripped out and stored in a database. By default, every email we send carries a unique id. In case it is a reply to another email, it also contains internal references to the thread it references. When a dataset of a particular mailing list is retrieved from the database, an algorithm links every message with their corresponding threads and presents a visual graph of that social network. The rules are: When a message is received, if the sender does not exist in the graph yet, then create it. If it does exist already, then increase its circumference diameter. The more messages from a particular person are found in a dataset, the bigger that person's node will be displayed on screen. A Key feature for this diagram is the absolute position of each node in the graph. If any other person in the graph replied an email to that particular person, a "visibility" point is rewarded, and the individual node is moved towards the center of the group. Every time someone replies to a mail thread, a line is plotted connecting both nodes, implying there was communication between those two persons. A socially central person in the graph will be the one that sits the closest to the center. The loudest person will be the one with the biggest circumference. credits concept, design & frontend coding: Marcos Weskamp backend coding Marcos Weskamp Dan Albritton resources Donath, J. Karahalios, K. Viégas, F. 1999. Visualizing conversations Berthold, M. et al. 1997. Clustering on the Net: Applying an autoassociative neural network to computer-mediated discussions Freeman, L. 2000. Visualizing Social Networks Erickson, T. 2003. Designing Visualizations of Social Activity: Six Claims [pdf] Erickson, T. and Kellogg, 2002. Social Translucence: Using Minimalist Visualizations of Social Activity to Support Collective Interaction. [pdf] Susani, M. 2002. Mapping communication Barabási, A. 2002. Linked: The New Science of Networks Buchanan, M. 2002. Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks Benyon, D. Hook,K. 2003. Designing Information Spaces: The Social Navigation Approach Dodge, M. 1999. Cyber Geography Research Minar, N. 1999. Visualing the crowds at a web site news [2003-12-26] - published [2004-01-01] - featured at rhizome.org's ArtBase [2004-02-01] - finalist at flash in the can festival [2004-05-06] - DYI social circles published
		all content © copyright 2003 - Marcos Weskamp