Visual analysis of social networks in space and time using smartphone logs

We designed and applied novel interactive visualisation to investigate how social networks – derived from smartphone logs – are embedded in time and space. Social networks were identified through direct calls between participants and calls to mutual contacts of participants. Direct contact between participants was sparse and deriving networks through mutual contacts helped enrich the social networks. Our resulting interactive visualisation tool offers four linked and coordinated views of spatial, temporal, individual and social network aspects of the data. Brushing and filtering techniques help us investigate how these aspects relate. We also simultaneously display some demographic and attitudinal variables to help add context to the behaviours we observe. Using these techniques, we were able to characterise spatial and temporal aspects of participants’ social networks and suggest explanations for some of them. We reflect on the extent to which such analysis helps us understand social communication behaviour.