Galaxy of news: an approach to visualizing and understanding expansive news landscapes

ABSTRACT

The Galaxy of News system embodies an approach to visualizing large quantities of independently authored pieces of information, in this case news stories. At the heart of this system is a powerful relationship construction engine that constructs an associative relation network to automatically build implicit links between related articles. To visualize these relationships, and hence the news information space, the Galaxy of News uses pyramidal structuring and visual presentation, semantic zooming and panning, animated visual cues that are dynamically constructed to illustrate relationships between articles, and fluid interaction in a three dimensional information space to browse and search through large databases of news articles. The result is a tool that allows people to quickly gain a broad understanding of a news base by providing an abstracted presentation that covers the entire information base, and through interaction, progressively refines the details of the information space. This research has been generalized into a model for news access and visualization to provide automatic construction of news information spaces and derivation of an interactive news experience.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.7 DOCUMENT AND TEXT PROCESSING
      I.7.2 Document Preparation
          Subjects: Format and notation

Additional Classification:
  G. Mathematics of Computing
  G.2 DISCRETE MATHEMATICS
      G.2.2 Graph Theory
          Subjects: Network problems

  H. Information Systems
  H.2 DATABASE MANAGEMENT
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Interaction styles (e.g., commands, menus, forms, direct manipulation)

  J. Computer Applications
  J.7 COMPUTERS IN OTHER SYSTEMS
      Subjects: Publishing

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design

Keywords:
3D interactive graphics, abstracted information spaces, information interaction design, information space design, information visualization, pyramidal information structures