The document discusses a study on personal networks in relation to websites about eating disorders. It highlights various methods for visualizing network data and emphasizes the significance of aesthetic presentation in data analysis. Additionally, it addresses the complexities of data representation and the politics surrounding quantified data in social contexts.

1. Visualizing
personal network
data
Examples from a study on
EDs websites
Antonio Casilli
Telecom ParisTech, Paris
Paola Tubaro
University of Greenwich, London

2. Pro-ana?
•
Recurrent moral panic around
websites on eating disorders, but
effects on socialisation and health
unclear
•
The ANAMIA project:
http://www.anamia.fr/en/
•
Our approach: a personal
networks perspective
•
Map structure of relationships,
investigate linkages with
behaviours
•
Reaching out to this population
and comparing their online and
offline networks

3. Mixed methods, mixed data…
• Web data, quantitative survey, qualitative interviews
• 3 personal network datasets per respondent (face-to-face, online,
support)
• Multiple methods employed in the analysis – SNA, regression,
agent-based computer simulation, textual analysis
• Dataviz as more general support

4. Defining datavisualization
•
“The desire to take what normally falls
outside of the scale of human senses
and to make visible and manageable”
[Manovich 2002]
•
Common tropes emerge: maps,
natural metaphors (trees…),
timelines, graphs…
•
“Sensory expression -- most often
visual, sometimes sonic or tactile -- is
the only means to perceive many
contemporary data sets” [Diamond
2010]
 Grant access to information in
an aesthetically informed,
sensorly appealing manner

5. Simple vulgarization tool?
«Pourquoi la censure et le filtrage ne marchent pas?», Le Monde, 16 Nov. 2012
http://internetactu.blog.lemonde.fr/2012/11/16/pourquoi-la-censure-et-le-filtrage-ne-marchent-pa

6. Balance diverging exigencies
•
Scientific accuracy
•
Aesthetics
•
Accessibility
•
Cognitive effectiveness
 Engage with social contexts
of consumption of these
images

7. The role of end-users
•
The page-based paradigm of the
web has been interrupted by
database incursions[Liu, 2004].
•
Personal, everyday experience of
data immersion and navigation shape
individual “data-subjectivity”
[Manovich 2002]

8. 1st tool: Visualization for data collection
ANAMIA EGOCENTER (2010-11) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAlSaDdAaC0

9. 1st tool: Visualization for data collection
Face-to-face egocentered networks

10. 1st tool: Visualization for data collection
Online egocentered networks

11. The role of researchers
•
Situate data in an interpretative
setting
•
This requires building tools allowing
to sort, order, analyze and present
what we agree on calling source or
“raw” data
•
The issue of transdisciplinarity…

12. 2nd tool: Visualization for data analysis
ANAMIA CORPUS (2012-13) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIxqG6j0Izs

13. The politics of data visualization
•
Take into account the politics of
quantified data representation
(reminiscent of the debates about
“who controls what’s on traditional
media”)
•
Establishing priorities, selecting
methods and procedures
•
Not sticking to tight scientific
“realism”, but making sense of the
data by building “heuristic narratives”
which resound with (but are not
limited to) empirical data.
•
“Telling stories with data”

14. 3nd tool: Datavisualization for “heuristic narrative”
ANAMIA PERSONAL (2013) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-eR0SnFI2M

15. Thank you!
E-mail:
coordination@anamia.fr
Web:
http://www.anamia.fr
Twitter:
@anamia