[Air-L] Visualization tool for conversations?

[gus andrews]

Hi everyone,

My dissertation involves conversational analysis of the comment
threads on blogs. I want to be able to visualize which commenters are
responding to other commenters. Does anyone have suggestions of
software to use? Ideally I'd like to find something where I can create
visualizations as I code, dragging lines between one comment and
another. (I realize the latter request is probably a pipe dream.)

I've already talked to Warren Sack at UCSC about the tool he used for
his dissertation, and at the moment it does not look as if it will
work for me, for two reasons: 1) I need to better visualize the
connection between threads in chronological order, and 2) it would
take a lot of work (for him!) to massage my data into a format which
his software could crunch.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
Gillian "Gus" Andrews
Doctoral Candidate, Communications in Education
Teachers College, Columbia University
www.gumbaby.com
www.youtube.com/user/themediashow