Text visualization: Expressive materials and diverse approaches

Abstract

Researches on text visualization have been extensively carried out with the development of the computer, the rise of open data based on Open API, and the commodification of visualization tools. Also, text visualization has led to the convergence of different fields, such as science, art, liberal arts, and sociology. Text visualization has a wide range of materials from the form and structure of text to contents text has created, not to mention independent meaning of each text. These materials are deliberately selected in accordance with the object of text visualization: what to express. A diversity of options could be used to achieve this goal. This paper is aimed to examine text data as materials for text visualization, an important part of data visualization, and discuss its types, nature and traits. This paper also explores different text visualization cases to provide a diversified analysis of expressive approaches to text visualization. © 2013 IEEE.