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commenTree uses Adobe Flash to essentially mine through hundreds of thousands of MySpace profiles, their biographies, their interests, and their comments. This data is then presented in the form of a graphical network interface displaying users in a organically connected manner. CommenTree aims to explore the various functions meshing real world and online interactions.
Users in the commenTree visualization are presented as orbs of different colors representing their gender, blue - males and pink - females. Each user has an icon associated with them depicting how much they comment. Less talkative individuals are shown with one speech bubble, whereas the most talkative have Three. Comment arcs are drawn between orbs when one user sends another a comment, the text of that comment can be seen scrolling down the side of the visualization so that the entire text body of that comment can be examined along with who is sending and who is receiving. When a orb receives a comment, it is lit brightly so that it can be easilly determined who is currently sending and receiving communication. Users that have accounts but don't send or receive comments (lurkers) have no arcs connected to them. As users cease communicating they fade away creating a visual depth and allowing new communications to be viewed easier.
The data for commenTree was originally collected for a project titled BioMemetics. BioMemetics was deveoloped by the collaboration of Derek Lomas, Ruth West, Todd Margolis, Jurgen Shultz, Jared Chandler, Tiffany Hopkins, Social Movement Laboratory, CRCA, and Calit2.
In an effort to better understand the patterns within the 2008 presidential candidate donations, the authors produced this interesting diagram, mapping all donations made between January 2007 and July 2008, to McCain (left in red) and Obama (right in blue). The two inner circles represent the total amount of donations for both candidates, while the outer segments illustrate variations in the amounts donated. The top-most bracket is any donation between $1 and $100, the second: $101 - $500, the third: $501 - $,1000 and the final: all amounts over $1,000. The size of each bracket represents the percentage amount that bracket constitutes in a candidate's total donations, and the hair-like lines coming out of them are the names of each donor, which produces a useful visual reference to the density of each category.
The distinction between candidates is immediately perceived with this visualization. As the authors explain: "What is most striking to us is how much more of Obama's donations come from the $1 to $100 bracket. We found a high number of students, artists, unemployed and self-employed people who fell in this bracket. One can speculate that these are the younger-generation individuals who will be voting for the first time or they are a struggling class of lower income workers. Probably more significant: this shows how much internet contributions have helped the Obama campaign, assuming the smaller amounts were made online. This data also shows that a majority of McCain's donations come from the $500 to $1000 bracket of donors. The amount is still smaller than Obama's, but this makes up almost two-thirds of his donations".
Since the donation information must be disclosed to the public, the authors turned to the Federal Election Commission to find a data set containing all donors, the amount they donated as well as other information they may explore in the future (e.g. occupation, zip code, employer). The data set time span is currently from January, 2007 through July, 2008, but the authors will be updating this information every month, as new data is released.
The images shown here are from an etnographic study which resulted in an engaging visual outcome, not common in this type of analysis. As the authors of the study explain: "Much of modern society is defined by material goods. In that sense, people are defined through other people's eyes based on what they do and do not or cannot own. Whether people admit it or not, judgments are made about people based on what they look like and what they own. These judgments might, in some cases, create unspoken bonds but in most cases create barriers between people".
With the goal of representing the cultural similarities between random people, the authors asked 32 participants to list some of the products, and activities that they are involved with: what artists they listen to, what movies they watch, what television shows they watch, what websites they might visit, what brands and accessories they wear, what electronics they own, and where they have lived. After collecting all this information from each participant, they asked them to categorize those products and activities into preset subcultural categories: Bohemian, Casual, Cyber, Nerd, Emo, Gamer, Gangsta, Hardcore, Hippie, Trendy, Indie, F.O.B., Sporty, Preppy, Punk, Rocker, Raggae, Skater. The authors then came up with a taxonomy that allowed the data to be best visualized within the Many Eyes website.
What resulted from this exercise was a deeply complex image showing social trends and unknown bonds between people through those trends. Besides producing a general diagram of subcultures (shown here) based on the data collected from the people who make up those cultures, the authors also created a series of specific diagrams based on particular brands (e.g. Nike, Vans) or subcultural categories (e.g. Trendy, Casual). The general diagram employs an array of colors based on the above-mentioned categories.
