COMPUTATIONAL METAPHOR ANALYSIS AND VISUALIZATION Lead Researcher: Eric Baumer Co-Researcher: Jordan Sinclair

Introduction - Metaphors  Not just a poetic device  Pervasive in everyday life

Argument IS War  Your claims are indefensible.  He attacked every weak point in my argument.  His criticisms were right on target.  I demolished his argument.  You disagree? Okay, shoot!  If you use that strategy, he'll wipe you out.

Conceptual Metaphor  A structure of what we do and how we understand what we are doing.

Computational Metaphor Identification (CMI)  A research project by Eric Baumer. Informatics Ph.D Student here at UCI, and my mentor.

Project Focus  Political Blogs  Political Blog Readers  The 2008 Presidential Election

Computational Metaphor Identification (CMI)  A research project by Eric Baumer. Informatics Ph.D Student here at UCI, and my mentor.  To encourage:  Reflection  Critical Thinking  Creativity

Implementaton – Front End  Flex – Flash/Actionscript Framework  Javascript  jQuery – Javascript Framework  HTML  AJAX

Implementaton – Back End  MySQL Database  Python  Mod_Python  Apache

 Semi-user centered design  Blog Reader Study  Initial Interviews  Prototype User Study

Demo! And if you download these slides, please click the link and try out the site! Tell us what you think! First, install the JRE, then the JDK. Hopefully you have gcc to compile any loose binaries (and other jargon). You’ll need to get eclipse and about forty plug-ins that must be installed in a precise order, otherwise metaViz will destroy your computer… Just kidding! metaViz is easily accessible. Click Here For metaViz

 Create  Argument is War  Argument is a Dance Participants are performers Goal is to perform in a balanced and aesthetically pleasing way  People would:  view arguments differently  experience them differently  carry them out differently  talk about them differently

Future Work  Lots!  Views:  Temporal  Comparison  More User Studies!  Focus Groups  More ‘Create’  debugging ;_;