Abstract:

Social network analysis and visualization is an active area of study which lacks good comprehensions and organizations of social network information. This paper proposes a domain ontologies model focusing on social network information, which describes the impersonal existences and the relationships among them in the social network information domain. The model is suitable for describing a wide variety of the social network analysis and visualization methods and can extend easily for different applications of information visualization of the social network. It improves the force directed the layout algorithm for overcoming the disadvantage of traditional force directed layout algorithm in analyzing and visualizing the structure of social network. The graphic results intuitively display the layout of subgroup and the close degree between actors, display key attributes and link characteristics etc. The results with the case of terrorist information show that our model can be excellent in analysis and visualization of social network information.

Key words: social network;domain ontology;information visualization;force directed layout algorithm;terrorist information