Call for Participation (pdf)
This workshop addresses a new online phenomenon: social data analysis, that is, collective analysis of data supported by social interaction.

In the last few months a new class of web site has emerged that enables users to upload and collectively analyze many types of data. These systems range from pure research projects to commercial business ventures. Sites like Many Eyes, Swivel and Data360 have attracted visualization fans, data geeks, journalists, scientists, and concerned citizens. The blogosphere has also taken notice, and bloggers frequently post about the ways in which they use these sites, the visualizations they create, and the data they upload.

The goals of this workshop are to:
   -- Bring together the community of researchers and practitioners focused on social data analysis
   -- Examine the design of social data analysis sites today
   -- Discuss the role that visualizations play in social data analysis
   -- Explore the different ways users are utilizing the various social data analysis sites to date

We seek researchers and practitioners whose work explores social data analysis and/or social uses of visualizations. We hope for a lively mix of people actively involved in building sites and academics who study the dynamics of social software.

Submitting:
Individuals interested in participating should submit a 2-4 page position paper describing experience with a social data analysis initiative, a proposed initiative, or an analysis of an issue of importance in this area.

New Submission deadline: October 31, 2007

Papers should conform to the CHI 2008 Extended Abstracts format and should be emailed to:
social-data-analysis@lists.berkeley.edu

Workshop Extended Abstract  (pdf)

Theme
In 2004, as the US presidential elections drew to an end, Americans started a lively online discussion about which states had voted “blue” (Democratic) and which had voted “red” (Republican). Using data available on the web, a group of people created a series of increasingly sophisticated maps that fueled the public debate on politics and a divided country. As the maps showed more nuanced versions of voting patterns—first state based, later county based, and finally taking population density into account (see images on the left)—they illustrated the multiple narratives that can be extracted from the same data. As Americans struggled to understand election results, the maps became emblematic of the difficulties in representing complex data and the richness behind collaboration around data.

We believe this kind of collective sensemaking is not an isolated phenomenon, but rather an exciting example of social data analysis around visualization.

In the last few months a new class of web site has emerged that enables users to upload and collectively analyze many types of data. These systems range from pure research projects to commercial business ventures. In the research front, Many Eyes [6] has attracted visualization fans with its interactive graphs. A number of governmental and commercial systems have also begun to explore the idea of communication around data: Dataplace [3], Data360 [2], DabbleDB [1], Chartall [4], and Swivel [8]. These sites range from domain-specific applications (Dataplace focuses on demographic information) to generic tools for any kind of user-uploaded data.

Several of these sites boast thousands of user-uploaded data sets and thousands more user-generated graphs. The blogosphere has also taken notice, and bloggers frequently post about the different ways in which they use these sites, the visualizations they create, and the data sets they upload.

Data
Data analysis is traditionally thought of as something done by experts in isolation or in small groups. Social data analysis, however, suggests the possibility of massive collaboration in the discovery process, involving experts and non-experts alike—perhaps a new frontier for Web2.0 citizenry. This perspective is suggested by the rise of the Web as a data platform. Recent years have witnessed internet-based data publishing ranging from government-generated data to scientific repositories of experimental data sets to data-oriented journalism (New York Times stories (Faces of the Dead [7]). These data sets are accessible to millions and it is natural to ask what new opportunities arise when data sets move to an environment where vast crowds of people can view and discuss them.

Visualization
Most of the above-mentioned sites have relied on visualization as an inherent part of their Web 2.0 analytical arsenal. While it is true that visual representations of data are helpful to many analyses, it is less clear if there is anything intrinsically “collaborative” about visualizations. Speculation suggests that interactive visualizations are a key medium for communication of data-rich insights to others, and preliminary reports ‎hint that visualizations potentially have a catalytic effect on conversation and potentially have a catalytic effect on conversation and collective data analysis [5][9][10]. The question persists: how central is visualization to social data analysis?

Goals
This workshop aims to:
1) Bring together the community of researchers and practitioners focused on social data analysis
2) Examine the design of social data analysis sites today
3) Discuss the role that visualizations play in social data analysis
4) Explore the different ways users are utilizing the various social data analysis sites to date

Participants
We welcome researchers and practitioners whose work explores social data analysis and/or social uses of visualizations. We hope for a lively mix of people actively involved in building sites and academics who study the dynamics of social software. Because the workshop aims to bring together a range of perspectives on communication-minded visualization, the organizers will actively select papers and participants that represent a diverse set of viewpoints.

Maximum Size
The workshop will have between 18 and 20 participants.

References
[1] DabbleDB. http://dabbledb.com/
[2] Data360. http://www.data360.org/
[3] Dataplace. http://www.dataplace.org/
[4] Chartall. http://www.chartall.com/
[5] Heer, J., Viégas, F., & Wattenberg, M. Voyagers and Voyeurs: Supporting Asynchronous Collaborative Information Visualization. In Proc. of SIGCHI 2007.
[6] Many Eyes. http://www.many-eyes.com/
[7] New York Times: Faces of the Dead. http://www.nytimes.com/ref/us/20061228_3000FACES_TAB1.html, retrieved 03-30-2007.
[8] Swivel. http://swivel.com/
[9] Viégas, F., boyd, d., Nguyen, D., Potter, J. & Donath, J. Digital Artifacts for Remembering and Storytelling: PostHistory and Social Network Fragments. In Proc. of HICSS-37, 2004.
[10] Wattenberg, M. Baby Names, Visualization, and Social Data Analysis. In Proc. of InfoVis 2005.