The Beauty of Data Visualization David McCandless, TED presentation on data visualization, via Alex Popescu.
The visualization of global media fear is a great example.
Visualization can lead to discovery of patterns in information.
It also illustrates how selection of information influences the visualization.
Along with swine flu and killer wasps, I would have included reports of terrorist plots.
Unlike the Fall sweeps, terrorist plots aren’t announced by terrorists in advance. Terrorist plots are announced by, wait for it, governments.
Would plotting government sponsored announcements of terrorist plots illustrate the chimerical nature of reports of terrorist activity?
Questions (class activity):
- What media sources should we mine for reports of terrorist plots?
- What qualifies as a report of a terrorist plot and how should we measure the media intensity of those reports?
- Should we use a timeline for such reports? If so, what else should populate the timeline?
- How do we plot actual terrorist attacks?
- How would we show relationship/non-relationship of plots versus attacks? Say large number of reported plots but unrelated attack in Mumbai?
- Assuming we have settled all the foregoing questions, how would you capture this information in a topic map?