Discovering and Visualizing Self-Organizing Communities within Email Archives

With the advent of the Internet, use of electronic mail (email) for both personal comm unication and professional collaboration has continually increased. The use of email for communication will soon far exceed the use of the conventional mail, if it does not already. Email naturally lends itself to being archived because it is stored as a digital medium and as a result, many people have amassed and archived large collections. As with any new communication medium, its existence has changed the dynamics of social communities and lead to the creation of new ones. However, the extent of the r esulting changes and unique effects has yet to be assessed. The large and relatively complete archives of email will allow the possibility of creating a tool to visualize and explore these dynamics.