ABSTRACT

Interesting online news visualizations are often discussed in Twitter, a conversation medium that is separated from the original visualization. We present VisTwit, a method that feeds back realtime Twitter discussions about a news visualization to the visualization itself, thereby promoting more involved discussions. Integrating VisTwit in a web-based visualization is easy: news editors simply define anchoring points in the visualization where Twitter messages containing associated keywords will be shown. The design space of VisTwit includes selection criteria of the ranking methods to filter messages, design of sparklines to show information scent, and methods for facilitating structured conversation between readers.