The above are a series of data visualizations for my Twitter account showing some of the types of traffic that one can expect there. I find Twitter especially useful for listening, hearing that back chatter that sometimes revolves around a subject. Sometimes you connect here as opposed to other place and it can be quite meaningful. A data visualization will help you see where that information falls down in clusters. Who is connected to who? All that sort of jazz.
The above are Facebook visualizations from a now defunct service, apparently. Either way, interesting to note in Facebook how groups are formed. I can see my Korean friends, work friends, hometown friends, college friends and more forming here with minimal overlap. Quite interesting. I think the whole experience has made me miss a few people, but that is a post for another day.
My name is Michael Sean Gallagher. I am a Lecturer in Digital Education at the Centre for Research in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh. I am Co-Founder and Director of Panoply Digital, a consultancy dedicated to ICT and mobile for development (M4D); we have worked with USAID, GSMA, UN Habitat, Cambridge University and more on education and development projects. I was a researcher on the Near Futures Teaching project, a project that explores how teaching at The University of Edinburgh unfold over the coming decades, as technology, social trends, patterns of mobility, new methods and new media continue to shift what it means to be at university. Previously, I was the Research Associate on the NERC, ESRC, and AHRC Global Challenges Research Fund sponsored GCRF Research for Emergency Aftershock Forecasting (REAR) project. I was an Assistant Professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (한국외국어대학교) in Seoul, Korea. I have also completed a doctorate at University College London (formerly the independent Institute of Education, University of London) on mobile learning in the humanities in Korea.
2 thoughts on “Data Visualizations for Twitter & Facebook, Nostalgia and More”
This is amazing! I love, love, love stuff like this. I’m always wondering about the connections between things and the way things overlap and come together, but I’m usually left confounded by the numbers. Interesting, thanks! ^^
Pure numbers are useless for me as well. Data visualizations are really big things in my sphere of work now. It draws some really concrete and distinct groupings and patterns. A few I have to recommend to you:
1. Wordle-do a chat session with a class and feed the text into Wordle to see a visualization of what they were talking about. Really fascinating.
2. Data for Research (dfr.jstor.org)- shameless plug, but I simply love this thing. Draws on all the data in JSTOR (5.4 million articles, 400 years) creatively. Totally open and free.
This is amazing! I love, love, love stuff like this. I’m always wondering about the connections between things and the way things overlap and come together, but I’m usually left confounded by the numbers. Interesting, thanks! ^^
Pure numbers are useless for me as well. Data visualizations are really big things in my sphere of work now. It draws some really concrete and distinct groupings and patterns. A few I have to recommend to you:
1. Wordle-do a chat session with a class and feed the text into Wordle to see a visualization of what they were talking about. Really fascinating.
2. Data for Research (dfr.jstor.org)- shameless plug, but I simply love this thing. Draws on all the data in JSTOR (5.4 million articles, 400 years) creatively. Totally open and free.
Thanks Melissa! Hope Daejon is treating you well!