Introduction
The visualization is an introduction to the main chapter on the debate amalysis in the academic world. It focuses on speakers and their competences analyzing who is mastering the debate and giving a first idea about the main opinions.
A technical viewpoint
About speakers:
who, where and how
How to read the visualization
In the middle of the circle there are four clusters representing the field from which the speakers come, the second step towards the exterior shows the profession in relation to the field and the name of the author. In the external ring each speaker is linked to a small histogram representing his relevance on social media, in particular the h-index from the Google Scholar profile, the number of the followers on Twitter and the connections on Linkedin.
How it has been done
The main dataset (see the protocol) has been integrated with data from the social, even if not all the speakers are active on this kind of media. A circular dendogram was created using RAW and then modified with Adobe Illustrator, finally integrated with the histogram bars. The graph file .svg was added to the .html file with a stylesheet for the interactions. It is possible to select a part of the inner ring to better observe the composition and relations among the elements. Because of the complexity and the size of the visualization, it is also possiple to zoom in to better read the labels.
Findings
Aim of the visualization is to introduce the research on academic papers and show names and competences of speakers. Most of the them are university professors interested in law, that is indicative and anticipates what the main opinions could be. The other bigger cluster refers to the human rights. The topic "mass surveillance" has a strong relation with the legislative and the human rights fields, while fewer tech experts debate the issue from a "technical" point of view.
