Visualizing Clashes and Alliances in Social Networks of Political Discussions

Rafael Lage Tavares, Mariano Pimentel, Renata Mendes de Araujo

Graduate Program in Information Systems, UNIRIO, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Center for Research and Innovation in CiberDemocracy, CiberDem, UNIRIO, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Graduate Program in Information Systems, UNIRIO, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Research and Practice Group in Information Technology, NP2Tec, UNIRIO, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Center for Research and Innovation in CiberDemocracy, CiberDem, UNIRIO, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Graduate Program in Information Systems, UNIRIO, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil;Research and Practice Group in Information Technology, NP2Tec, UNIRIO, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil;Center for Research and Innovation in CiberDemocracy, CiberDem, UNIRIO, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

DOI: 10.4236/sn.2014.32012                

Abstract

Political discussions are characterized by conflicts of interest, and decisions are made based on negotiations. In general, participants need to reinforce their opinions and influence other participants. In this context, it is important to know how allies and opponents are positioned, in order to understand the discussion dynamics and plan adequate actions. This paper suggests the use of social network visualizations to explicit oppositions and alliances in order to support the understanding and following of political discussions. A system which supports these visualizations was built. An experiment performed to test the proposed visualizations showed to which extent they can be more efficient in identifying information about clashes and alliances than an online discussion system can.

Keywords

Social Network Visualization; Online Political Discussion; Electronic Participation

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

[1]	G. Fischer, “Understanding, Fostering, and Supporting Cultures of Participation,” Interactions, Vol. 18, No. 3, 2011, pp. 42-53.
[2]	R. L. Tavares, M. Pimentel and R. M. Araujo, “Visualizing Clashes and Alliances in Social Networks of Political Discussions,” Proceedings of the Brazilian Workshop on Social Network Analysis and Mining, XXXII Congress of the Brazilian Computer Society Computer Society, Curitiba, 2012.
[3]	J. D. Fekete, “The InfoVis Toolkit,” Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization, Austin, 2004, pp. 167-174. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/INFVIS.2004.64
[4]	Oxford University Press, Oxford Dictionaries, 2012. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/
[5]	C. W. Choo, “The Knowing Organization,” Oxford University Press, New York, 1998.
[6]	A. D. Tocqueville, “Democracy in America,” Saunders and Otley, London, 1945.
[7]	G. Allison and P. Zelikow, “Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis,” 2nd Edition, Longman Publishing, London, 1999.
[8]	R. Wettel, M. Lanza and R. Robbes, “Empirical Validation of CodeCity: A Controlled Experiment,” USI Technical Report Series in Informatics, 2010.