Development of visualizations for social network analysis of chatroom text

In this paper a set of visualization tools and related ideas are introduced for extracting and analyzing social network features present within persistent, multi-speaker, multi-topic, quasi-synchronous computer-mediated communication systems enacted over the internet, i.e., internet chatrooms. Preliminary models of these tools are applied to a real-world chatroom dataset. Results suggest the utility of such tools for enhancing the usability of digital text communications and the understanding of social structures and dynamics within the virtual world. Potentially promising visualization methods and areas of future research are discussed.