摘要：Political discussions are characterized by conflicts of interest, and decisions are made based on negotiations. In general, participants need to reinforce their opinions and influence other participants. In this context, it is important to know how allies and opponents are positioned, in order to understand the discussion dynamics and plan adequate actions. This paper suggests the use of social network visualizations to explicit oppositions and alliances in order to support the understanding and following of political discussions. A system which supports these visualizations was built. An experiment performed to test the proposed visualizations showed to which extent they can be more efficient in identifying information about clashes and alliances than an online discussion system can.
关键词：Social Network Visualization; Online Political Discussion; Electronic Participation
