Visualizing linguistic and cultural differences using web Co-link data

Authors

L. Vaughan, Vaughan, L.; Faculty of Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario, London, Ont. N6A 5B7, Canada; email: lvaughan@uwo.caFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2006

Volume

57

Journal

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology

First Page

1178

URL with Digital Object Identifier

https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.20398

Last Page

1193

Abstract

The study examined Web co-links to Canadian university Web sites. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) was used to analyze and visualize co-link data as was done in co-citation analysis. Co-link data were collected in ways that would reflect three different views, the global view, the French Canada view, and the English Canada view. Mapping results of the three data sets accurately reflected the ways Canadians see the universities and clearly showed the linguistic and cultural differences within Canadian society. This shows that Web co-linking is not a random phenomenon and that co-link data contain useful information for Web data mining. It is proposed that the method developed in the study can be applied to other contexts such as analyzing relationships of different organizations or countries. This kind of research is promising because of the dynamics and the diversity of the Web.