Map Notice

The screen is composed of two frames: the map area in the center of the screen and the settings area on the left-hand side.

The map area

1. Description

   The map area contains the online political debate map, presented with its nodes and edges.
   The nodes represent websites. The edges represent hyperlinks between websites.
   The size of a node as well as the quantity of edges displayed depend on different parameters found in the settings area (see below). The pale blue zones in the map indicate a high density of links.

2. Navigating the map with your mouse

   Use your mouse scrolling button to zoom in and out.
   Hold down the left button to move to different areas of the map.

The settings area

1. Navigation panel

   A navigation panel in the top left hand corner of your screen shows the specific location you are currently viewing inside the map.
   The slider is used to zoom in or out.
   This navigation panel allows you to display the map in two different ways: Classic View (default view) and the Fish Eye View (wide angle view close to 180°).

2. Size of the nodes

   The size of a node is either determined by its Authority Degree or by its Xeno Degree.

   Authority Degree:
   The size of a node is proportional to the number of inbound links. The more inbound links there are, the bigger the node is.

   Xeno Degree:
   The size of a node follows the number of sites linking thereto that do not belong to its category. The more a website is pointed to by websites of other categories, the bigger the node is.

3. Categories and Colors

   Each category has been assigned a specific color, displayed close to its name.
   The “Hide All” and “Show All” buttons allow to display or hide all the nodes on the map. Clicking on a category will display or hide all this category’s nodes.

4. Distribution panel

   The distribution of the different categories on the map can be seen as a pie chart or a bar chart. They help you to see the part of each category, due to the number of their elements.
   Roll over the various segments of the charts to have more details on each category (number of nodes, percentage of the total number of nodes on the map).

5. Website panel

   When a website is selected, all the links to and from it are shown.
   Additional information on the selected website (thumbnail picture, category, number of links, site family) is available in the settings area.

6. Search panel

   It is possible to search for a specific site on the map, based on its name in full or in part.
   You can restrict the search to a specific category.
   The results will be displayed at the bottom of the search panel.

7. Links panel

   By default, all the edges on the map are displayed.
   In darkblue are displayed simple links (from a site A to a site B) and in lightblue mutual links (when sites A and B link back and forth to each other).

   3 different colors show the nature of the links for selected websites: inbound links to a website are red, outbound links from a website are yellow, and mutual links between two websites are green.

   If your computer is powerful, you may choose the antialiased render.

   The maximal links size slider enables the displaying of links based on their lengths between two sites.