How to explore fine-grained but meaningful information from the massive amount of social media data is critical but challenging. To address this challenge, we propose the TopicBubbler, a visual analytics system that supports the cross-level fine-grained exploration of social media data. To achieve the goal of cross-level fine-grained exploration, we propose a new workflow. Under the procedure of the workflow, we construct the fine-grained exploration view through the design of bubble-based word clouds. Each bubble contains two rings that can display information through different levels, and recommends six keywords computed by different algorithms. The view supports users collecting information at different levels and to perform fine-grained selection and exploration across different levels based on keyword recommendations. To enable the users to explore the temporal information and the hierarchical structure, we also construct the Temporal View and Hierarchical View, which satisfy users to view the cross-level dynamic trends and the overview hierarchical structure. In addition, we use the storyline metaphor to enable users to consolidate the fragmented information extracted across levels and topics and ultimately present it as a complete story. Case studies from real-world data confirm the capability of the TopicBubbler from different perspectives, including event mining across levels and topics, and fine-grained mining of specific topics to capture events hidden beneath the surface.
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