The visualization is an introduction for the main chapter about the debate in the academic world. It focuses on the speakers and their background to analyze who is taking part at the debate and giving a first idea about the main opinions.
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 the social media, in particular the h-index from the Google Scholar profile, the number of the followers on Twitter and the connections on Linkedin.
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 app.raw.densitydesign.org and then modified with Adobe Illustrator and 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.
Aim of the visualization is to introduce the research on the academic papers and show names and fields of studies. Most of the speakers are university professors inerested 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 field, while fewer tech experts debate the theme from a "technical" point of view.
