I've also used NodeXL to analyze connections & conversations in online forums. Handy and effective, and used with excel: http://www.codeplex.com/NodeXL Tracy Kennedy Message: 4 Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:16:20 -0400 From: gus andrews <gus.andrews@gmail.com> Subject: [Air-L] Visualization tool for conversations? To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Message-ID: <18fe74ae0904210916l39ce16e2gfe47b905cb324b48@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 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