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In this chapter we turn our attention away from examining attempts to spatialize information and network spaces and instead consider attempts to spatialize modes of online communication and interaction between people. As such, this chapter is concerned with what might be termed “peoplecentered” information visualization. Cyberspace is composed of a variety of social media – email, mailing lists, listservers, bulletin boards, chat rooms, multi-user domains (MUDs), virtual worlds, game spaces – that support social interaction between people who are geographically dislocated. Many commentators now view the fostering of social interaction as the most significant aspect of cyberspace. Indeed, there is no denying that these social media are used every day and inhabited by millions of people talking, discussing, arguing, flirting, playing, and chatting with one another. As a consequence, the social uses and consequences of cyberspace have received significant academic and public attention, including attempts to spatialize these interactions in attempts to either engender more effective communication or to aid the comprehension of how these media function and the social relations they support. Before examining the wide range of ways to spatialize these media, we outline in brief some of the debates concerning the meaning and value of social media of cyberspace in order to illustrate its social significance and demonstrate the value of the spatializations we detail. In general, analysts argue that the social media of cyberspace provide (1) new conditions under which individuals can explore and manipulate their identity; (2) new spaces in which communities – with very different characteristics to those in geographic space – can be developed and sustained. In the first instance, analysts suggest that cyberspace allows individuals to explore their identity by changing the conditions under which identity is constructed and expressed. Cyberspace achieves this by providing a space of disembodiment and dislocation, because interaction is conducted through a medium that strips away body codings (e.g. age, gender, race) and geographic place and community. In other words, in
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cyberspace a person’s identity is defined by words and actions, not body and place. In cyberspace, some commentators contend, your body is irrelevant and invisible and nobody need know your race, disability, gender, sexuality, material wealth, or geographic location unless you choose to reveal it. This stripping away, it is hypothesized, allows individuals to experiment with aspects of their identity that they would otherwise conceal. Although some question the degree to which cyberspace provides a space of meaningful social interaction, we believe that the influence of identity experimentation in cyberspace should not be dismissed lightly. The evidence gathered so far indicates that the social interactions that take place there clearly have a significant influence on some people, changing their outlook and values. In the second instance, it is contended that individuals are exploiting the flexibility and fluidity of cyberspace to forge new communities – new social networks that are centered upon what they think, say, believe and are interested in. As such, some suggest that one of the principal effects of cyberspace is the formation of communities that are free of the constraints of place and are based upon new modes of interaction and new forms of social relationships. Instead of being founded on geographic propinquity, these communities are grounded in communicative practice. Here, individual participants can circumvent the geographical constraints of the material world and take a more proactive role in shaping their own community and their position within it, although (just like geographic communities) such online communities have behavioral norms, differing personalities, shared significance, and allegiances. Often, these communities are promoted as an antidote to, or as a supplementary means of belonging to or creating a sense of place for, traditional communities that are perceived to be disappearing in the geographic world due to processes of cultural and economic globalization, which are leading to a condition of placelessness.