Visualization aims to define the subject of investigation, organizing the wide network information basin of Wikipedia. The network highlights the different clusters that emerge from See Also connections, to delineate the operating area and define selected topics. Main nodes are also useful keywords, for improving the query.
The visualization, as a common network, is structured in nodes, that represent Wikipedia pages, and edges connecting them.This edges reflect the connection existing between a wikipedia page and its “See Also” links. The size of nodes expresses the InDegree value, that is the number of edges that reach a specific node, whereas colors depict different topic clusters. Also the gap between nodes is significative, and conveys the level of Wikipedia pages interrelation, consequently it shows how much two arguments are link each other. It is possible to choose different depth degrees, zooming-in the visualization until examine the labels of the smaller nodes.
The network has been built starting by a cvs file, containing source and target columns, through the use of Gephi. The network’ spatialization has been done with Force Atlas 2 algorithm, searching the values of scaling and gravity that allow the clearest visualization. To export the network on the web, as an html file, has been used Gephi Plugin Sigma.js template choosen for its ability to implement the zoom function independently (the zoom allow different levels of visualization reading) and for its capability to respect color nodes and Gephi network structure.
The world of mass surveillance is very wide and embrace different theme typologies, from military world to biomedical one, passing by politic, analytic research and human rights. This network however has a significant group of nodes in his center, and this allows to delineate the operating area including topics strictly related each other. The main topics, actor and informations that come to light from this visualization are: Mass Surveillance, Privacy and Computer Security, surveillance programs like ECHELON, COINTELPRO, and surveillance whistleblowers, from the most famous Edward Snowden to the less known - at any rate in Europe - Thomas Tamm, William Binney and Thomas A. Drake. These results represent the starting point for the second step of this analysis, because they set up a themes-base that will be enlarge and improve in the next chapter.
