Current: A News Project | ITP Spring Show Highlights

What Sandra Bullock has to do with Tennessee traffic law, British election results and the future of news sensemaking.

Last weekend, we stopped by the annual ITP Spring Show, showcasing the best of interactive sight, sound and technology by students at NYU’s Interactive Technology Program. While the festival was brimming with fascinating installations and projects, we were particularly taken with Current: A News Project. Created by Zoe Fraade-Blanar, the project uses data visualization — a chronic favorite around here — to explore the life cycle of internet memes in reaction to news media in real time.

Current is essentially a snapshot of “hivemind,” offering a collective portrait of what America’s entire internet user base has been concerning itself with in the past 24 hours via their collective search history. Keywords are distilled into memes, which Fraade-Blanar treats as “living ‘thought organisms’ that act as though they have agency, control, and a selfish motivation.”

An active meme with medium coverage

A meme with two submemes

The project aims to expose something we too believe is one of the information economy’s greatest follies — “Digg mentality,” or the tendency for certain types of news to be regurgitated and pushed to the top by groupthink, while more niche yet important and fascinating content sinks to the bottom of our collective awareness — and, in the process, reclaim news readership lost to sensationalism.

News relies on soft stories like horoscopes, celebrity gossip and restaurant reviews to subsidize the important but less sensational stories that keep democracy running. At base, any solution to News’ present problems must address the balance between the hard news we need and the soft news that drives advertising dollars. By visually anthropomorphizing the capricious nature of public attention Current can spotlight these missed opportunities in news coverage.

A saturated meme

Fraade-Blanar, who worked at the New York Times Analytics Group last summer exploring ways to analyze incoming traffic behaviors, was inspired by the disconnect she noticed between the kinds of stories that caused spikes of traffic and their cultural footprint, with superficial stories often rising above reporting on important political events.

An unsuccessful news item published outside the Memescape

A long-lived meme in the Memescape

At base, any solution to News’ problems must offer a path to financial success in addition to advice on maintaining journalistic integrity. Current seeks to fulfill this purpose by supplying the ability to differentiate which news items are most likely to draw web traffic to a news source.

Current comes as a free desktop app for both Mac and PC (though make sure the Read Me on the Mac install — it’s not as seamless as we like our apps), allowing users to track and examine custom memes.

A highly carnivorous meme

The project reminds us of a more visual, minimalist version of Zoetrope, another brilliant news visualization concept you may remember from a couple of years ago, and illustrates the increasing necessity for a sensemaking platform for news data and meme propagation.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 11th, 2010 at 12:00 am in culture, software, word-of-mouth and was tagged culture, data visualization, innovation, media, social web, word-of-mouth.

Current – noteworthy data visualization project from the ITP Spring Show explores how memes propagate http://is.gd/c3GiG

This comment was originally posted on Twitter

brainpicker on May 10th, 2010 at 8:15 pm

RT @brainpicker: Current – noteworthy data visualization project from the ITP Spring Show explores how memes propagate http://is.gd/c3GiG

realplanning on May 11th, 2010 at 3:27 am

Current – noteworthy data visualization project from the ITP Spring Show explores how memes propagate http://is.gd/c3GiG (via @brainpicker)

mauro23 on May 11th, 2010 at 3:34 am

Infographics time: Data visualization of how memes propagate http://is.gd/c3GiG (via @brainpicker, who comes up with #ubercool links)

sanjeevn on May 11th, 2010 at 3:58 am

sanjeevn on May 10th, 2010 at 8:58 pm

The life cycle of internet memes in reaction to news media in real time. http://bit.ly/9sm58B

LenKendall on May 11th, 2010 at 5:03 am

RT @LenKendall: The life cycle of internet memes in reaction to news media in real time. http://bit.ly/9sm58B

dabitch on May 10th, 2010 at 10:17 pm

ricardodiaz11 on May 11th, 2010 at 6:09 am

The life cycle of internet memes in reaction to news media in real time. http://bit.ly/9sm58B via/ @LenKendall:

meghkeaney on May 10th, 2010 at 11:15 pm

djgraymatter on May 10th, 2010 at 11:53 pm

An NYU Interactive Tech Program project using data visualization to plot reaction to news stories http://bit.ly/c5cQ8x (via @brainpickings)

l3ahb3tan on May 11th, 2010 at 1:38 am

Current – noteworthy data visualization project from the ITP Spring Show explores how memes propagate http://is.gd/c3GiG /via @brainpicker

MorpheusMedia on May 11th, 2010 at 4:28 am

Current: A News Project – from the ITP Spring Show, visualization project tracing how memes propagate http://is.gd/c4Isj

brainpicker on May 11th, 2010 at 1:23 pm

RT @brainpicker Current: A News Project – from the ITP Spring Show, visualization project tracing how memes propagate http://is.gd/c4Isj

kirstinbutler on May 11th, 2010 at 1:26 pm

RT @brainpicker: Current: A News Project – from the ITP Spring Show, visualization project tracing how memes propagate http://is.gd/c4Isj

aaforse on May 11th, 2010 at 6:26 am

RT @kirstinbutler: RT @brainpicker Current: A News Project – from the ITP Spring Show, visualization project tracing how memes propagate http://is.gd/c4Isj

meste48 on May 11th, 2010 at 7:19 am

#DataViz Project: “Current: A News Project” by @ZFraBla – http://is.gd/c4ORI – story at @brainpicker – http://is.gd/c4OuF

chrisgrayson on May 11th, 2010 at 7:56 am

loopdiloop on May 11th, 2010 at 8:30 am

Current: a data visualization of internet memes as they carry out lifecycle activities in reaction to the news media http://icio.us/xov541

ActuVisu on May 11th, 2010 at 10:02 am

[...] Other standouts included Zoobursts super-cool Augmented Reality interactive pop-up books for kids, built by Craig Kapp. And coming from a world of Conversation Mining at Converseon ; Zoe Fraade-Blanar’s Current news project showing a data visualization of Google Hot Trends linked to Google News really intrigued me (and I’ve blogged on Google Hot Trends before). There is a great review, with detailed screenshots, of her project over at Brain Pickings. [...]

paullyoung.com » Blog Archive » ITP Spring Show 2010 on May 11th, 2010 at 7:11 pm

RT @ActuVisu: Current: a data visualization of internet memes as they carry out lifecycle activities in reaction to the news media http://icio.us/xov541