LiteMap

Description
Screenshots
Videos
Acknowledgements
Source Code
Publications

Description

Developed by the Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute, LiteMap is a Web tool for mapping out visually the content of online debates across different forums and Websites. With LiteMap users can harvest issues, ideas, pros and cons of public debates and connect them in meaningful network graphs. LiteMap supports web annotation and visual summarisation to trigger reflection, promote deeper understanding and improve engagement with online debates.

Features

A Visualisation Dashboard to support sensemaking and reflection.
A bookmarklet to harvest and annotate content while browsing the Web
2-D mapping canvases to connect ideas and build argument maps.
A Community Website to collaboratively create and share maps.

Online discussions on issues of public concern are often dispersed across different Websites and Social Media environments. This makes it difficult for stakeholders to make sense of the state and progress of a public debate.

LiteMap is a tool to support sensemaking and summarization of public debates across Web forums and discussion media. By allowing easy markup and annotation through any Web browser, LiteMap enables users to grasp clips of text from an online conversation and make them objects of further reflection and discussion. Within LiteMap content from previously disconnected online conversations and debates can be connected in new meaningful ways. Visual maps can be built by single users or groups to make a point or better communicate ideas and results to others. LiteMap is designed to help both community managers.

Community managers can use LiteMap to organise contributions to the debate, reduce idea duplication, and support content analysis and summarisation.

Community members can use LiteMap for sensemaking and self-reflection: to build a visual representation of their own view of a topic or debate; to communicate personal ideas to others; and to point the community’s attention to important issues.

LiteMap is one of the Catalyst’s ecosystem of Collective Intelligence Tools to improve community deliberation of complex societal challenges.

LiteMap is part of a family of digital technologies developed by the IDea research group (Intelligent Deliberation research group in KMi) and designed to improve collective intelligence and online deliberation is small-to-large collaborating groups. If you are interested to know more about our research, LiteMap and similar tech we are developing please contact the IDea team.

Screenshots

Example of the LiteMap homepage

Example of the LiteMap groups page

Example of the LiteMap maps page

Example of a LiteMap map page

Videos

LiteMap Concept Movie

Summarising and Mapping Arguments Visually with LiteMap

How to Harvest Online Debate Content with LiteMap

Using LiteMap to map an existing debate on the Utopia platform

Acknowledgements

LiteMap’s design, development and testing was undertaken as part of the FP7 Project Catalyst on Collective Applied Intelligence and Analytics for Social Innovation by the Knowledge Media Institute team at the Open University.

Team

Professor Anna De Liddo
Professor Simon Buckingham-Shum
Michelle Bachler – Software Development
Samantha Colclough – Software Development
Harriett Cornish – Graphics

Source Code

For the source code for the LiteMap website application, please visit our Git Hub: https://github.com/idea-kmi/LiteMap
Note: the software is released under LGPL license.