Information Visualization for Exploration and Self-Reflection in Social Media

The emergence of global social media platforms in the last decade has changed how people communicate and inform themselves. Today, people use social media during work and leisure time to send messages, browse current events, and keep up with friends and family both near and far. Virtually every platform uses reverse chronological lists to prioritize and deliver content throughout the network. This presentation modality implicitly puts the viewer's focus on the present moment, on the newest content available. Lists may be effective for the purposes of real-time content viewing but other representations are better suited to see our social media activity in aggregate and to focus the viewer's attention on the past. This dissertation investigates the potential of information visualization to show people their social media data to gain awareness about their online social history. Unlike many visualizations for social media that use graph representations and focus on the structure of the network, our approach focuses on showing the broad temporal characteristics of personal social media activity. We present design studies that focus on three different parts of a social media platform, specifically Facebook: the news feed, the personal profile, and private messages. In our first study, participants were observed while they browsed their news feed and were interviewed in situ about their reactions and opinions. Next, we present Friend Bubbles, an interactive visualization that shows the connections between friends and posted content on the personal profile. Finally, we present TextVis, an online survey tool that asks participants to explore their instant message history with a large-scale temporal visualization. This dissertation ends with reflections about how social media and computer interfaces may influence people's attention and awareness, and how information visualization can be used to support exploration and deeper knowledge about personal social media experiences.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Computer Science

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Science

Year dc:date.issued

2021

Author dc:creator

• Lapides, Paul

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Carpendale, Sheelagh

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Isenberg, Petra
• Willett, Wesley
• Boulanger, Pierre
• Katz, Larry
• Aycock, John

• Information Visualization
• Social Media
• Social Networks

Statement dc:rights

• University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.

Language dc:language.iso

eng

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/38985

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ucalgary.scholaris.ca:1880/113596