Contextual Visualization of Actor Status in Social Networks

Abstract

We propose a novel information visualization approach for an analytical method applied in the social sciences. In social network analysis, social structures are formally represented as graphs, and structural properties of these graphs are assumed to be useful in the explanation of social phenomena. A particularly important such property is the relative status of actors in a given network.

Since operationalizations of status are aggregate indices of vertices, researchers are not only interested in status, but also in the context leading to these values, i.e. the underlying social network. We therefore visualize the network in a layered fashion, mapping status scores to vertical coordinates. The resulting problem of determining horizontal positions of vertices such that the over all layout is readable, is algorithmically difficult, yet well-studied in the literature on graph drawing. We outline a customized approach that routinely produces satisfactory pictures at interactive speed.

*Part of this research was done while with the Department of Computer Science at Brown University. I gratefully acknowledge the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD/Hochschulsonderprogramm III) for financial support.