If you ever once uttered the words “It’s a small world!” it
was likely in the context of realizing you were somehow connected to a random
stranger through a random sphere of your life. It could have been a past job,
an old class mate, or distant relative. This phenomenon is popularly recognized
as the 6 degrees of separation. Essentially it is the theory that everyone and
everything is six or fewer steps away from any other person in the world. How
much closer do you think people are now with social media? It is a curiosity.
Perhaps it is more fun to not know and have those connections surprise you from
time to time.
With the help of Visual Analytics and
Social Media we can explore all kinds of inter connections beyond the 6 degrees that cross many
various aspects of life, not just who
we might bump into. The interdisciplinary approach is superior in
solving
complex issues. For example, the uploaded YouTube video contains an
example of
the capabilities to gather information from micro blog texts from
various languages about symptoms of illnesses and visualize these over a
geographical
spread in time. With this information further analysis can be conducted
utilizing keywords from micro blog accounts that people mindlessly
publish. The
end results and conclusion may surprise you! It is important to
note that much of the information individuals publish on micro blogs
like
twitter and Facebook can be used by analysts to visualize trends in time
and
geographic space.
Amazing Video !! I could have never imagined how Visual Analytics can help keep a track of, analyze symptoms of and determine root cause of an epidemic spreading around a particular town.
ReplyDeleteAnd as for the Social Media and Visual Analytics closing in the 6 dimensions of connections between people, I think we have a very popular illustration of this on Linkedin, where your circles and network now connect you to millions of other people.