Feng Wang

Bio: Feng Wang is an academic researcher from Arizona State University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Social media & Visual analytics. The author has an hindex of 5, co-authored 10 publications receiving 204 citations. Previous affiliations of Feng Wang include General Electric & University of Science and Technology of China.

Visualizing Social Media Sentiment in Disaster Scenarios

Abstract: Recently, social media, such as Twitter, has been successfully used as a proxy to gauge the impacts of disasters in real time. However, most previous analyses of social media during disaster response focus on the magnitude and location of social media discussion. In this work, we explore the impact that disasters have on the underlying sentiment of social media streams. During disasters, people may assume negative sentiments discussing lives lost and property damage, other people may assume encouraging responses to inspire and spread hope. Our goal is to explore the underlying trends in positive and negative sentiment with respect to disasters and geographically related sentiment. In this paper, we propose a novel visual analytics framework for sentiment visualization of geo-located Twitter data. The proposed framework consists of two components, sentiment modeling and geographic visualization. In particular, we provide an entropy-based metric to model sentiment contained in social media data. The extracted sentiment is further integrated into a visualization framework to explore the uncertainty of public opinion. We explored Ebola Twitter dataset to show how visual analytics techniques and sentiment modeling can reveal interesting patterns in disaster scenarios.

Integrating predictive analytics and social media

Abstract: A key analytical task across many domains is model building and exploration for predictive analysis. Data is collected, parsed and analyzed for relationships, and features are selected and mapped to estimate the response of a system under exploration. As social media data has grown more abundant, data can be captured that may potentially represent behavioral patterns in society. In turn, this unstructured social media data can be parsed and integrated as a key factor for predictive intelligence. In this paper, we present a framework for the development of predictive models utilizing social media data. We combine feature selection mechanisms, similarity comparisons and model cross-validation through a variety of interactive visualizations to support analysts in model building and prediction. In order to explore how predictions might be performed in such a framework, we present results from a user study focusing on social media data as a predictor for movie box-office success.

Business intelligence from social media: a study from the VAST Box Office Challenge.

Abstract: With over 16 million tweets per hour, 600 new blog posts per minute, and 400 million active users on Facebook, businesses have begun searching for ways to turn real-time consumer-based posts into actionable intelligence. The goal is to extract information from this noisy, unstructured data and use it for trend analysis and prediction. Current practices support the idea that visual analytics (VA) can help enable the effective analysis of such data. However, empirical evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of a VA solution is still lacking. A proposed VA toolkit extracts data from Bitly and Twitter to predict movie revenue and ratings. Results from the 2013 VAST Box Office Challenge demonstrate the benefit of an interactive environment for predictive analysis, compared to a purely statistical modeling approach. The VA approach used by the toolkit is generalizable to other domains involving social media data, such as sales forecasting and advertisement analysis.

Analyzing Entrepreneurial Social Networks with Big Data

Abstract: As we begin to understand who uses particular social media platforms, this user information represents a way forward for understanding the types of research questions for which big data might prove valuable. In this respect, the use of social media data for analyzing entrepreneurial networks represents a promising research domain. Not only does the user profile of social media users overlap substantially with the profile of entrepreneurs, but research highlights that the entrepreneurial process is a fundamentally networked activity. Given this research promise, this study analyzes digitally mediated interactions using Twitter data collected about a variety of actors engaged in entrepreneurial networks for the United States over an eighteen-month period. Analytical results reveal that the hashtags used in this analysis (#smallbiz and #entrepreneur) do capture (albeit not exhaustively) well-known actors in entrepreneurial networks, as well as important subtleties in the geography of locales engaged in these...

A Visual Analytics Framework for Spatiotemporal Trade Network Analysis

Abstract: Economic globalization is increasing connectedness among regions of the world, creating complex interdependencies within various supply chains. Recent studies have indicated that changes and disruptions within such networks can serve as indicators for increased risks of violence and armed conflicts. This is especially true of countries that may not be able to compete for scarce commodities during supply shocks. Thus, network-induced vulnerability to supply disruption is typically exported from wealthier populations to disadvantaged populations. As such, researchers and stakeholders concerned with supply chains, political science, environmental studies, etc. need tools to explore the complex dynamics within global trade networks and how the structure of these networks relates to regional instability. However, the multivariate, spatiotemporal nature of the network structure creates a bottleneck in the extraction and analysis of correlations and anomalies for exploratory data analysis and hypothesis generation. Working closely with experts in political science and sustainability, we have developed a highly coordinated, multi-view framework that utilizes anomaly detection, network analytics, and spatiotemporal visualization methods for exploring the relationship between global trade networks and regional instability. Requirements for analysis and initial research questions to be investigated are elicited from domain experts, and a variety of visual encoding techniques for rapid assessment of analysis and correlations between trade goods, network patterns, and time series signatures are explored. We demonstrate the application of our framework through case studies focusing on armed conflicts in Africa, regional instability measures, and their relationship to international global trade.

Regression Diagnostics: Identifying Influential Data and Sources of Collinearity

Abstract: 1. Introduction and Overview. 2. Detecting Influential Observations and Outliers. 3. Detecting and Assessing Collinearity. 4. Applications and Remedies. 5. Research Issues and Directions for Extensions. Bibliography. Author Index. Subject Index.

A practical guide to the American Community Survey (3-year estimates)

Abstract: Historically, most demographic data for states and substate areas were collected from the long version of the decennial census questionnaire. A “snapshot” of the characteristics of the population on the April 1 census date was available once every 10 years. The long form of the decennial census has been replaced by the American Community Survey (ACS) that has been conducted on an ongoing basis for the entire country since 2005. Instead of a snapshot in which all of the data are gathered at one time, the ACS aggregates data collected over time, making the results more difficult to interpret. However, the ACS data are updated annually.

Color Appearance Models

Abstract: Color science is a multidisciplinary field with broad applications in industries such as digital imaging, coatings and textiles, food, lighting, archiving, art, and fashion. Accurate definition and measurement of color appearance is a challenging task that directly affects color reproduction in such applications. Color Appearance Models addresses those challenges and offers insight into the preferred solutions. Extensive research on the human visual system (HVS) and color vision has been performed in the last century, and this book contains a good overview of the most important and relevant literature regarding color appearance models.