Chris Harrison

Chris Harrison is a grad student at CMU's Human Computer Interaction Institute. He's been working on a suite of visualization projects around internet/web data, some of which involve social media content.

ClusterBall visualizes link structure within Wikipedia:

This visualization shows the structure of three levels of Wikipedia category pages and their interconnections. Centered in the graph is a parent node. Pages that are linked from this parent node are rendered inside the ball. Finally, pages that are linked to the latter (secondary) nodes are rendered on the outer ring. Links between category pages are illustrated by edges, which are color coded to represent their depth from the parent node. Nodes are clustered such that edge lengths are minimized. This forces highly connected groups of pages to clump together, essentially forming topical groups. The center acts as an anchor while the ring provides a fixed perimeter. This allows the secondary, super-categories to "float" above clusters.

Internet Map pictures the internet traffic density between location on the planet.

The stronger the contrast, the more connectivity there is. It is immediately obvious, for example, that North America and Europe are considerably more connected than Africa or South America. Additionally, three graphs showing network connections were created. I should note this is not the first time graphs like this have been created - I've seen dozens of variations, most being practical in nature (e.g. cable locations, bandwidth). I decided to pursue an aesthetic approach - one more visually intriguing and interesting to explore than useful. The intensity of edge contrast reflects the number of connections between the two points. No country borders or geographic features are shown. However, it should be fairly easy to orient yourself.