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ted.com

28

Jun

2010

Visualizing Divisions and Bridges in Cyberspace

By Maria Popova

What the Tea Party has to do with Twitter and the anxieties of dating.

Data visualization is an obsession around here and viz-wiz duo Wattenberg and Viégas are among our absolute favorites. At the recent Personal Democracy Forum, they gave an excellent talk about some of their recent projects and how data visualization can be used to better comprehend behavioral patterns acorss the social web.

Among the highlights: Web Seer visualizes how different groups — men vs. women, Democrats vs. Republicans — complete the same Google Suggest search queries. (Remember Question Suggestions?)

We get a portrait of people’s anxieties.” ~ Martin Wattenberg

A new, unreleased project looks at trending topics on Twitter and uses hand-crafted (as opposed to algorithm-designed) visualizations to capture the racial profile of certain topics.

Another not-yet-released project looks at Twitter conversations algorithmically, clustering words related to a specific search term around certain topical areas based on the hashtags used in the tweet mentioning the search term — in this case, “Obama.”

The algorithm also allows you to switch to avatar view, offering a curious collective portrait of the kinds of people engaging in conversations about that topic.

There are a lot of divisions in cyberspace and visualization helps expose them, but it also helps expose how the bridges are being built.” ~ Martin Wattenberg

See more of Wattenberg and Viégas’ fantastic work on their new joint online home, hint.fm.

via

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 28th, 2010 at 4:45 am in culture, social web, software and was tagged , , , .

35 Responses

  1. Visualizing Divisions & Bridges in Cyberspace – genius from data viz superteam @wattenberg + @viegasf http://bit.ly/9qknth

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    brainpicker on June 27th, 2010 at 8:30 pm

  2. Visualizing Divisions & Bridges in Cyberspace – from @wattenberg + @viegasf http://bit.ly/9qknth via @brainpicker

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    XNetInfoSys on June 28th, 2010 at 7:18 am

  3. Wow: “Visualizing Divisions and Bridges in Cyberspace” http://bit.ly/bukEC4 #data #visualisation #google #society

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    DirkSonguer on June 28th, 2010 at 12:39 am

  4. RT @DirkSonguer: Wow: “Visualizing Divisions and Bridges in Cyberspace” http://bit.ly/bukEC4 #data #visualisation #google #society

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    huxi on June 28th, 2010 at 2:11 am

  5. Fantastic infographics: “What the Tea Party has to do with Twitter & the anxieties of dating” http://cot.ag/bLdYFM via @brainpicker

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    SMichaelGriffin on June 28th, 2010 at 10:22 am

  6. Interesting look at some daterz

    This comment was originally posted on FriendFeed

    jared on June 28th, 2010 at 3:38 am

  7. “There are a lot of divisions online & visualization helps expose them, but it also exposes how the bridges are built.” http://bit.ly/9qknth

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    brainpicker on June 28th, 2010 at 1:40 pm

  8. RT @brainpicker: “There are a lot of divisions online & visualization helps expose them, but it also exposes how the bridges are built.” http://bit.ly/9qknth

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    aembermango on June 28th, 2010 at 1:43 pm

  9. RT @brainpicker: “There are a lot of divisions online & visualization helps expose them, but it also exposes how the bridges are built.” http://bit.ly/9qknth

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    kdragon87 on June 28th, 2010 at 1:46 pm

  10. RT @brainpicker: “There are a lot of divisions online & visualization helps expose them, but it also exposes how the bridges are built.” http://bit.ly/9qknth

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    pieropoli on June 28th, 2010 at 1:51 pm

  11. Visualizing Divisions and Bridges in Cyberspace http://j.mp/9Kwqae

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    mediapeople on June 28th, 2010 at 6:55 am

  12. RT @brainpicker: “There are a lot of divisions online & visualization helps expose them, but it also exposes how the bridges are built.” http://bit.ly/9qknth

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    josefslerka on June 28th, 2010 at 7:18 am

  13. Another great example of visual sense-making by Wattenberg & Viegas: http://bit.ly/dqjQmt /via @brainpicker

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    cooper_journal on June 28th, 2010 at 2:44 pm

  14. RT @cooper_journal: Another great example of visual sense-making by Wattenberg & Viegas: http://bit.ly/dqjQmt /via @brainpicker

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    lerch015 on June 28th, 2010 at 7:48 am

  15. Visualizing Divisions & Bridges in Cyberspace – from @wattenberg + @viegasf http://bit.ly/9qknth via @brainpicker

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    zards on June 28th, 2010 at 8:45 am

  16. ????? ?? ????????? ??????? http://bit.ly/bukEC4 (via @brainpicker)

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    borislavka on June 28th, 2010 at 9:37 pm

  17. “There are a lot of divisions online & visualization helps expose them, but it also exposes how the bridges are built.” http://bit.ly/9qknth

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    edutechnews on June 28th, 2010 at 11:24 pm

  18. What the Tea Party has to do with Twitter and the anxieties of dating. http://bit.ly/9SwePv by @brainpicker

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    LenKendall on June 29th, 2010 at 12:07 am

  19. Cute data visualization shows how groups differ – men vs women, Dems vs Republicans etc http://bit.ly/bvFJLa

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    rrizley on June 29th, 2010 at 1:09 am

  20. Wattenberg and Viégas: Visualizing Social Conversations | Brain Pickings http://ow.ly/24ZlY

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    DavidHolzmer on June 29th, 2010 at 5:40 pm

  21. Visualizing Divisions and Bridges in Cyberspace: http://bit.ly/9LUIVw

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    thinkbrilliant on June 29th, 2010 at 5:45 pm

  22. RT @thinkbrilliant: Visualizing Divisions and Bridges in Cyberspace: http://bit.ly/9LUIVw

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    wwjimd on June 29th, 2010 at 5:46 pm

  23. Wattenberg and Viégas: Visualizing Social Conversations | Brain Pickings http://meb.tw/a0Dd6X

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    znmeb on June 29th, 2010 at 5:48 pm

  24. RT @znmeb: Wattenberg and Viégas: Visualizing Social Conversations | Brain Pickings http://meb.tw/a0Dd6X

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    musicCS on June 29th, 2010 at 11:28 pm

  25. RT @znmeb: Wattenberg and Viégas: Visualizing Social Conversations | Brain Pickings http://meb.tw/a0Dd6X

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    breizh2008 on June 29th, 2010 at 11:36 pm

  26. Novel and impressive data visualization examples at http://bit.ly/bUz8aJ Wattenberg and Viegas. How to overlap of tag clouds.

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    OpLaunch on June 29th, 2010 at 11:42 pm

  27. Novel and impressive data visualization examples at http://bit.ly/bUz8aJ Wattenberg and Viegas. How to overlap tag clouds. Infographics

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    OpLaunch on June 29th, 2010 at 4:43 pm

  28. Wattenberg and Viégas: Visualizing Social Conversations | Brain Pickings: http://bit.ly/cUMUam

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    RSSirteubal on June 30th, 2010 at 11:45 am

  29. fascinating http://bit.ly/bUz8aJ

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    fzrmc on July 1st, 2010 at 3:16 pm

  30. RT @edutechnews: “There are a lot of divisions online & visualization helps expose them, but it also exposes how the bridges are built.” http://bit.ly/9qknth

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    phoenix2life on July 1st, 2010 at 1:29 pm

  31. RT @brainpicker Wattenberg and Viégas: Visualizing Social Conversations | Brain Pickings http://is.gd/dbSG1

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    pauladaunt on July 4th, 2010 at 6:19 am

  32. Interessante. Vale a pena espreitar. http://fb.me/xiEml2yc

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    Vice_PT on July 6th, 2010 at 4:34 am

  33. Interesting Google Suggest Visualisations. Fascinating social decipher http://bit.ly/9XVgid

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    louiswh on July 8th, 2010 at 1:58 am

  34. @david_briggs You’ll find this one interesting: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2010/06/28/wattenberg-viegas/

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    toddosaurus on July 8th, 2010 at 5:25 pm

  35. Data visualization of Divisions n Bridges in Cyberspace http://bit.ly/cTTpP2 @brainpicker #infographics

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    andrew_w_morse on July 16th, 2010 at 3:59 pm

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