out of sight, out of mind

1. Overview
My project will map the frequency of words related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in relation to the number of American casualties in those two conflicts.

2. Data
NY Times Article Search API, TimesTags API, http://icasualties.org/

3. Design Questions

The shape of a graph of casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan will obviously be one that increases over time – sharply at first, then more slowly as time passes. My question is how much and until what point the number of
articles regarding the wars in the two regions follows the same slope. I would probably track these numbers month by month. I would also like to compare Iraqi civilian casualties, but this will be much more difficult. It would also be interesting to see the first mentions of an insurgency, as well as terms relating to withdrawal from the conflict.

4. Prior Art / Precedents

Most of the data visualizations I’ve seen about the war in Iraq have  plotted the casualty count data against date, where the deaths took place, where the soldiers were from, and how their number compared to estimated Iraqi civilian deaths. I have not seen any that address the coverage of the conflict in the media or how it changed over time. I feel that this pattern makes the stories told by other data visualizations about the war that much more powerful and moving.

*Edit: Lie by Lie is an amazing interactive timeline of the events leading to the war in Iraq and asks who knew what when: our leaders, journalists, commentators, etc.