Infographic : Twitter Orographies

Twit�ter Oro�gra�phies is an exper�i�ment in the visu�al�iza�tion of Twit�ter con�ver�sa�tions targeting the dis�cus�sion space around a given key�word. It rep�re�sents the seman�tic space of top�ics that emerge, the rel�a�tive rel�e�vance of each topic, and the rela�tions between the dif�fer�ent top�ics that arise from the discussion.

Oper�a�tionally, Twit�ter Oro�gra�phies works by lis�ten�ing (in real time) to the stream of all the tweets that men�tion a given key�word (or hash�tag). Each one of these tweets is then ana�lyzed by remov�ing com�mon words with weak seman�tic con�tent (such as arti�cles and propo�si�tions) and the remain�ing words are added to a weighted net�work in which the dis�cus�sion top�ics are rep�re�sented by nodes (weighted by fre�quency) and weight of the edges rep�re�sent the relat�ed�ness of the top�ics (how often the two top�ics appear in the same tweet).

Once the final net�work is defined, the inter�face cre�ates a seman�tic land�scape out of the dis�cus�sion, in which the most rel�e�vant top�ics appear as higher moun�tains and the emerg�ing top�ics as lower hills, and where the relat�ed�ness is mapped to topic prox�im�ity and dis�played through the use of explicit visual links.

The oro�graphic metaphor allows to track the evo�lu�tion of smaller and big�ger land�forms that rep�re�sent spe�cific top�ics, moun�tain sys�tems that dis�play clus�ters of related top�ics, oro�grafic belts cre�ated by chains of given words (usu�ally caused by pseudo-retweets).