Message Feature Map toward Effective Facilitation on On-line Discussions

In these years, with the expansion of network-based communication tools, consumer based marketing strategies using on-line discussions have received much attention. To get the benefit from on-line discussions, methodologies for analyzing on various discussion elements are demanded. In this paper, we propose a message feature map, which is a visualization method for plotting discussion messages on a plane with two axes; centralities and expansiveness. This map gives us an intuitive understanding and quick grasp of discussion status. The experimental results with using the data collected in a real on-line focus group discussion shows that the message feature map helps us to observe the discussion status effectively.