Thursday, December 12, 2013

Data visualization of Wikipedia edits

This isn't exactly social network analysis, but I thought our class of data visualizers might appreciate this: http://listen.hatnote.com/#nowelcomes,en

Friday, December 6, 2013

Network Analysis Showing Increasing Polarization of American Congress

I came across a very interesting article with a set of network maps of the 101st (1989 session), 107th (2002) and 113th (2013) Congresses. From the article published in the Economist:

"The network maps shown here look at the degree to which senators vote the same way. Each node is a senator. Links represent instances when senators have voted similarly on substantive legislation on at least 100 occasions during the same congressional session. Their placement is determined algorithmically, based on their co-operation with other legislators—which has the effect of pushing more bipartisan ones to the centre."

The conclusion of the analysis, done by a computer science undergrad at Harvard, is not surprising; Congress and American policymaking has become much more polarized over the past two decades.

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21591190-united-states-amoeba

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/12/daily-chart

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

"How Ukrainian protestors are using Twitter and Facebook"


"Taken together, our data suggests that Ukrainian social media users are strategically using the tools available to them in the ways that seem most effective. The disparity in language use between Facebook and Twitter suggests an understanding on the part of users about the audiences consuming the content they produce in each medium. The spike in Twitter use is, to our knowledge, a previously unobserved phenomenon. It suggests a reciprocal relationship between social media and protest, where social media can serve as an important strategic tool for protest, and at the same time attract new users to online communication platforms."

Facebook activity on public pages related to Ukrainian protests [Data: NYU Social Media and Political Participation (smapp.nyu.edu) lab; Figure: Pablo Barberá and Megan Metzger]

Ukrainian protests tweets by language [Data: NYU Social Media and Political Participation (smapp.nyu.edu) lab; Figure: Pablo Barberá and Megan Metzger]



Ukrainian protests and creation of new twitter accounts[Data: NYU Social Media and Political Participation (smapp.nyu.edu) lab; Figure: Pablo Barberá and Megan Metzger]