Creating Interactive Visualizations for Twitter Datasets using D3

Sammanfattning: Project Meme Evolution Programme (Project MEP) is a research program directed by Raazesh Sainudiin, Uppsala University, Sweden, that collects and analyzes datasets from Twitter. Twitter can be used to understand how ideas spread in social media. This project aims to produce interactive visualizations for datasets collected in Project MEP. Such interactive visualizations will facilitate exploratory data analysis in Project MEP. Several technologies had to be learned to produce the visualizations, most notably JavaScript, D3, and Scala. Three interactive visualizations were produced; one that allows for exploration of a Twitter user timeline and two that allows for exploration and understanding of a Twitter retweet network. The interactive visualizations are accessible as Scala functions and in a website developed in this project and uploaded to GitHub. The interactive visulizations contain some known bugs but they still allow for useful exploratory data analysis of Project MEP datasets and the project goal is therefore considered met.