Visualizing Reciprocal and Non-Reciprocal Relationships in an Online Community

Online communities thrive on their members’ participation and contributions. There are numerous ways to visually represent information, current status, power, and acceptance of members in an online community. In this paper we present a design of a visualization representing reciprocal and non-reciprocal relationships among users, which emphasizes and hopefully triggers common bond in the community. Our future goal is to see whether the visualization triggers higher participation in an online community called “WISEtales”, which currently is mostly based on common identity. If our hypothesis is confirmed, it will present one of the few examples of successful community whose members associate both by common identity and common bond.