Mining and visualization of interpersonal interaction networks

While modern online social networks offer unprecedented amount of data and opportunities for mining, other forms of social networks have been around throughout human history. Classic books, whether fictional or non-fictional, then become important sources for the analysis of interpersonal interactions. In this paper, we propose a formal framework for the mining of interpersonal interactions from classic books. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the formal approach by presenting the encouraging result from a network analysis conducted over the persons appearing in the book of Genesis. The result aids the understanding of the persons featured in the book and their interactions. We also present the merits and challenges of visualization techniques pertaining to our work.