Social Set Visualizer (SoSeVi) II: Interactive Social Set Analysis of Big Data

Current state-of-the-art in big social data analytics is largely limited to graph theoretical approaches such as social network analysis (SNA) informed by the social philosophical approach of relational sociology. This paper proposes and illustrates an alternate holistic approach to big social data analytics, social set analysis (SSA), which is based on the sociology of associations, mathematics of set theory, and advanced visual analytics of event studies. We first presented the SSA approach to a wider audience at IEEE Big Data 2015 [6], IEEE EDOCW 2015 [7], and IEEE EDOCW 2016 [8]. Since then we worked on improving SoSeVi in order to further demonstrate its usefulness in large-scale visual analytics tasks of individual and collective behavior of actors in social networks. The current iteration of the Social Set Visualizer (SoSeVi) builds upon some of the concepts laid out by the UpSet project [14] and aims to further improve the capabilities of researchers and practitioners in big social data analytics alike. We then illustrate our new approach by reporting on the design, development, and evaluation results of a state-of-theart visual analytics dashboard, the Social Set Visualizer (SoSeVi). The development of the dashboard involved cutting-edge open source visual analytics libraries (D3.js) and creation of new visualizations such as visualizations of actor mobility across time and space, conversational comets, and more. Evaluation of the dashboard consisted of technical testing, usability testing, and domain-specific testing with CSR students and yielded positive results. In conclusion, we discuss the new analytical approach of social set analysis and conclude with a discussion of the benefits of set theoretical approaches based on the social philosophical approach of associational sociology.