Analyzing social streams is important for many applications, such as crisis management.
However, the considerable diversity, increasing volume, and high dynamics of social
streams of large events continue to be significant challenges that must be overcome
to ensure effective exploration. We propose a novel framework by which to handle complex
social streams on a budget PC. This framework features two components: 1) an online
method to detect important time periods (i.e., subevents), and 2) a tailored GPU-assisted
Self-Organizing Map (SOM) method, which clusters the tweets of subevents stably and
efficiently. Based on the framework, we present StreamExplorer to facilitate the visual
analysis, tracking, and comparison of a social stream at three levels. At a macroscopic
level, StreamExplorer uses a new glyph-based timeline visualization, which presents
a quick multi-faceted overview of the ebb and flow of a social stream. At a mesoscopic
level, a map visualization is employed to visually summarize the social stream from
either a topical or geographical aspect. At a microscopic level, users can employ
interactive lenses to visually examine and explore the social stream from different
perspectives. Two case studies and a task-based evaluation are used to demonstrate
the effectiveness and usefulness of StreamExplorer.Analyzing social streams is important
for many applications, such as crisis management. However, the considerable diversity,
increasing volume, and high dynamics of social streams of large events continue to
be significant challenges that must be overcome to ensure effective exploration. We
propose a novel framework by which to handle complex social streams on a budget PC.
This framework features two components: 1) an online method to detect important time
periods (i.e., subevents), and 2) a tailored GPU-assisted Self-Organizing Map (SOM)
method, which clusters the tweets of subevents stably and efficiently. Based on the
framework, we present StreamExplorer to facilitate the visual analysis, tracking,
and comparison of a social stream at three levels. At a macroscopic level, StreamExplorer
uses a new glyph-based timeline visualization, which presents a quick multi-faceted
overview of the ebb and flow of a social stream. At a mesoscopic level, a map visualization
is employed to visually summarize the social stream from either a topical or geographical
aspect. At a microscopic level, users can employ interactive lenses to visually examine
and explore the social stream from different perspectives. Two case studies and a
task-based evaluation are used to demonstrate the effectiveness and usefulness of
StreamExplorer.