Abstract
In this paper we will demonstrate the potential of processing and visualising the dynamics of computer-mediated communities by means of Social Network Analysis. According to the fact that computer-mediated community systems are manifested also as structured data, we use data structures like e-mail, discussion boards, and bibliography sources for an automatic transformation into social network data formats. The paper will demonstrate a 3-dimensional visualisation of two cases: the first presents an author community based on bibliography data converted into GraphML. Based on this dataset we visualise publications networks with a tool called Weaver, which is developed in our research group. According to Lothar Krempel’s algorithm, Weaver uses the first two dimensions to embed the network structure within a common solution space. The third dimension is used for representing the time axis and thus the dynamics of co-authorship relations. The second case describes recent research in open source communities and highlights how our visualization approach can be used as a complement to more traditional approaches, such as content analysis and statistics based on specific SNA indices.
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Harrer, A., Zeini, S., Ziebarth, S. (2010). Visualisation of the Dynamics for Longitudinal Analysis of Computer-mediated Social Networks-concept and Exemplary Cases. In: Memon, N., Alhajj, R. (eds) From Sociology to Computing in Social Networks. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-0294-7_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-0294-7_7
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