An Interactive Visualization Framework for Time-Series of Web Graphs in a 3D Environment

Abstract

We propose an interactive framework for the 3D visualization of the time-series of Web graphs. The purpose of our framework is to enable users to examine the evolution of Web graphs by comparing multiple graphs that have different timings and topics. To achieve this, we provide TimeSlices that are 2D planes to visualize Web graphs in a 3D environment. Users can interactively add new TimeSlices along the timeline, and they can manipulate them to animate Web graphs. Visualized Web graphs on TimeSlices are snapshots of different timings. Moreover, we provide mechanisms to generate and manipulate overlay views and parallel views in the 3D environment to enable Web graphs to be compared. Users can seamlessly change these viewing modes. Our system can also visualize two Web graphs created from different keywords to display the evolutional correlation between them. This system enables us to observe structural and temporal changes in multiple Web graphs such as shifts in influential blogs or power shifts in the diffusion of blogs between topics.