Midterm Proposal: Justin & Thai

1. Overview

Our project explores the geographical locations that certain terms an associated with.  The intention for this interactive visualization is to delineate the progression of different location’s significance, as they relate to specific terms. (i.e. what country was talked about most regarding “9/11″ between 2001-2003).  We’re hoping that new narratives will arise from the proliferation of issues and news articles from the New York Times over the past  28 years.

2. Data

We’re still selecting our mapping API – but for now we’re intending to use:

1. NY Times Article Search API
2. Google Maps API
3. NY Times Tags API

3. Design Questions?

The main questions we’re asking thus far are:

• What does the geographical context of breaking issues in the news look like over a period of time?
• Are there patterns in the topics being discussed about specific locations over time?
• What is the best way to represent the significance of locations as they pertain to past issues in the news?
• What are the best ways to filter terms, should the results for each visualization be dynamically generated?

4. Precedents

Our first precedent is a project from Yale called “Geographcially based Economci Data (G-Econ)”.  This visualization shows economic fluctuations on a 3 diminutional geospatial model.  This project is an example of how we might be easily convey the geographical significance of certain terms over a period of time.

The second precedent that we chose is Jer Thorp’s visualization entitled “Is Twitter the New Internet?”. This piece explores the usage of specific terms over time to show the proliferation of internet based services over the past 2 decades.  We selected this piece because we’re also interested in term frequency within the New York Times article databases, but instead looking at the importance of locations within the context of specific issues.

5. Collaboration

We still haven’t worked out the specifics for this yet, but so far I will be working on most of the coding and Thai will be primarily handling the design for the project. These tasks will most likely overlap during certain areas of the project however.