Mapping #RussiaInvadedUkraine

From snarky exchanges between official Canadian and Russian Twitter accounts, conflicting representations of Crimea in Google Maps and OpenStreetMap, and a recent piece by Peter Pomerantsev in The Atlantic on how Vladimir Putin is revolutionizing information warfare, the ongoing conflict in the Ukraine has been widely reflected online. One particular manifestation of this conflict on social media was the #RussiaInvadedUkraine hashtag, which emerged at the end of August as Russian troops appeared in Eastern Ukraine. The hashtag has served as a social media rallying point for supporters of Ukraine, with the New York Times reporting that in the first day of its existence, over 500,000 tweets using the hashtag were sent.

Wondering what the spatial distribution of this hashtag looked like across Europe, we fired up DOLLY and collected all geotagged tweets containing the hashtag sent from European countries between August 27th and September 7th, 2014, resulting in approximately 4,500 tweets. To control the effect of single, very active, individuals sending many tweets -- and to better represent aggregate rather than individual actions -- we only included the first five tweets from any single user, resulting in a total of about 2,100 geotagged tweets. These tweets were aggregated to the country level and then normalized by the total number of tweets sent during this same time period, resulting in a location quotient for each country. The location quotient indicates the relative prevalence of tweets containing the #RussiaInvadedUkraine hashtag compared to the overall level of Twitter activity during this same time. Values greater than one indicate that people in a given country contributed a greater number of tweets about this topic than would be expected based on usual tweeting levels, with values less than one meaning that they were underrepresented in tweets using this hashtag than one might usually expect.

The map above illustrates a strong concentration of the #RussiaInvadedUkraine hashtag in countries that are nearer to the Russian border. In short, a classic example of a distance decay function, in which distance from a phenomenon is inversely related to attention or presence of a given phenomenon. In general, most countries within Eastern Europe -- including Russia itself -- show a higher level of Twitter activity around this hashtag, with some exceptions such as Moldova, Slovakia and Romania. In particular, however, the Ukraine and its neighbor Belarus show an extremely high level of activity around this issue, with the Ukraine alone contributing roughly 48x more of the tweets using this hashtag than it did to the baseline sample used for normalization. Conversely, as one moves westward, the level of participation in this social media meme drops considerably. While Germany, which is both geographically and relationally more proximate to Eastern Europe has a location quotient of just 0.81, the Netherlands and Italy have scores of 0.25 and 0.22, with the UK and France having extremely low location quotient values of just 0.05.

Of course, Twitter is not an unproblematic representation of the population, and tweets containing this hashtag can express a range of sentiments from both sides of the conflict [1]. Quite clearly, the interest and official response from western states (and their militaries) is not tied to the level of popular participation in social media activism. Instead, as we showed in the case of tweeting related to Ferguson, Missouri and the protests around the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager at the hands of a police officer, geography matters when it comes to directing our attention to news and current events, with people more directly connected to these issues having a much greater level of interest and concern [2]... even when it involves the invasion of military forces from one country into their neighbor.

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[1] Although a quick review of the text reveals that these tweets are primarily critical of Russia's actions.
[2] Of course, this shouldn't be particularly surprising. But for some people, it is.

Mapping Wikipedia edits from Europe

Time for a few more maps from our database of Wikipedia edits (which tells us how many contributions to the encyclopedia originate in each country). In the maps of Europe below, the height of each country represents the number of edits originating in that place. The shading indicated the number of edits per Internet user (darker reds meaning higher per capita participation). 

We see that the majority of edits in Europe come from Germany, the UK, France and Italy. Other countries in Europe contribute far less to Wikipedia.

Interestingly though, Germany and UK have fairly low participation rates when normalised by Internet population. Internet users in Italy, Scandinavia, the Baltic States, and even Ukraine are more likely to make an edit to Wikipedia than their British or German counterparts.

Also notable are the relatively low (total and relative) participation rates from Portugal and Poland.

Measuring Politicians' Popularity in Google Maps Placemarks

Mapping the relative popularity of different politicians is old hat to the Floatingsheep collective -- our map comparing references to Barack Obama and John McCain was one of the first maps ever featured on the site (and the first that Taylor made!). A much more aesthetically advanced version of that map has now published in the Atlas of the 2008 Elections, edited by fellow Kentucky geographer Stan Brunn and a bevy of others. To honor that publication, as well as to acknowledge the ballyhoo these days about the role of digital technologies in promoting social and political change across the globe, more analysis seems timely. We now broaden the geographic extent of our earlier map and present the following, showing the relative prevalence of references to the names of political leaders in eight major countries in Europe and North America.

Politicians' Placemark Popularity

As is par for the course around here, each color dot represents more references in that location to the name of that politician than to each of the other seven. In other words, a purple dot means that there are more references to Barack Obama than to Angela Merkel, David Cameron, etc. It should also be noted that the keywords used for this comparison are the full names of each politician, rather than simply a last name.

Politician's Popularity in Europe

When focusing on Europe, the map almost perfectly shows that references to the name of a political leader are likely to predominate in the country that politician represents. England is awash in the burnt orange color symbolizing David Cameron, Spain in brown for José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, France in the pink of Nicolas Sarkozy, the silver of Silvio Berlusconi covering Italy, the blue-green of Angela Merkel filling the borders of Germany, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's yellow in Turkey and the green of Dmitry Medvedev scattered across Russia, however concentrated in the west. In this sense, the map conveys a relatively simple point that we've been spending quite some time trying to reiterate: the internet, and thus the data within it, is not somehow disconnected from geography. Instead, the two are very much intertwined, with digital representations of place being very much tied to the characteristics of that place, including its politics.

Where this map gets interesting, however, is when one looks away from Europe, especially returning to the United States (see the first map above). One may expect a veritable blanket of purple, symbolizing Obama, to cover the country in much the same way as the references to other political leaders did in their home countries. It is instead a potpourri of colors, with each of the other politicians dominating in one place or another. Whether this has to do with Obama's declining popularity or something else, we are unsure.

Given that all of the other countries included in this map, with the exception of Russia, are relatively small in terms of area, there may be a negative correlation between the areal extent of the country and the likelihood of complete homogeneity in Google Maps references. It is surprising, however, how much this deviates from Obama's dominance when compared to John McCain in 2008, as reflected in our Presidential Placemark Poll map. Maybe this is just evidence of an evil Obama plot to sell off America's virtual territory to socialist (and not-so-socialist) Europeans?

As always, our speculation usually leads us to a dead end, to which we have now arrived. Let the digital jockeying for territorial dominance commence!

Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse, Part I: Zombies or Old People?

The following is pulled from the cutting room floor of our upcoming chapter in the edited collection Zombies in the Academy: Living Death in Higher Education.

With all the recent talk of the zombie apocalypse, including our own forthcoming book chapter on a similar topic, we've been worried that the older and slightly disheveled population has been put at greater risk of personal injury due to their being confused for the undead [1]. Always eager to lend a helping hand, the Floatingsheep collective has turned to the infinite wisdom of the collective internet to map the relative prevalence of zombies and old people. It is our hope that this guide will help lower the level of zombie hunter on senior citizen violence that has plagued human kind for generations [2].

Zombies and Old People in Europe

Europe, for example, presents a quite clear picture of the spatial variation in the zombie and elderly populations. Word to the wise for our transatlantic zombie-hunting compatriots: hold your fire in France and Germany. Though we have no idea why there are so many old people, do make note that these are innocent citizens. Unless, however, the zombies have established a colony in these countries and have just effectively been able to hide their presence under the guise of retirement homes [3].

Do, however, be on the lookout in the low countries, as zombies appear to be rampant in the Netherlands as well as much of Belgium [4].

Zombies and Old People in the USA

When looking only at the United States, however, there is no such easily discernible spatial pattern. Though much of the eastern seaboard appears to be dominated by zombies, this corpse cluster is bookended by small concentrations of the merely elderly in both Washington, D.C. and Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Given our earlier finding of Cape Cod as being the highest concentration of "fun" in the United States, we're not sure if this should be surprising. While many may not consider shuffleboard and iced tea to be the most fun things in the world, I believe we can find some general agreement on the fact that a zombie apocalypse is most certainly NOT fun. If it is a choice between spending a weekend with the undead or the old-fashioned, I think we're all going to pick grandma and grandpa.

Ultimately it appears as if zombie hunters in the United States will be forced to use their best judgment, rather than the tools of spatial visualization, to determine who needs to be taken out in the event of the zombie apocalypse.

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[1] No senior citizens were harmed in the making of this crass, terrible attempt at humor. Plus it was Mark's idea. We also thought "confused people" might be mistaken for zombies as well but despite our expectations -- and considerable evidence all around us in the material world -- searches for for references to the phrase "confused people" in the geoweb did not produce many results.

[2] And it came to pass, when Israel had made an end of slaying all the zombies of Ai in the field, in the wilderness wherein they chased them, and when they were all fallen on the edge of the sword, until they were consumed, that all the Israelites returned unto Ai, and smote it with the edge of the sword. And so it was, that all that fell that day, both of male and female zombies, were twelve thousand, For Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out the spear, until he had utterly destroyed all the zombies of Ai and a good deal of the older and slower moving people as well. Book of Joshua, Chapter 8, versus 24-26

[3] The lack of cognitive abilities on the part of zombies does make this theory somewhat less plausible. But when you're talking about the zombie apocalypse, you can never be too careful.

[4] Or, perhaps if we had also done a search on "stoned people", the pattern would be different.

Distribution of References to Food in Arabic and Hebrew

Continuing our look at the distribution of language in the geoweb, the map below shows the pattern of references to the word food in Arabic and Hebrew. The locations marked in gray are places in which neither language had more references which usually meant both languages had zero. Locations in white are either indicative of water (e.g., the Black Sea) or are places without any placemark references.

The dominance of Hebrew in the Israel/Palestine area corresponds to some of our earlier findings. Continental Europe shows some interesting clusters with much of Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and parts of Germany contain more Arabic references, while Switzerland, Austria and parts of Germany have more references to food in Hebrew.

References to the word "food" in Arabic and Hebrew, Data from 2010

(Green=more references in Arabic; Red=more references in Hebrew)

Geography of Beer by Language

With the summer months upon us, the FloatingSheep Collective is busy with travel and paper-writing and as a result, we've not been posting as much.

This will be changing over the next weeks as we are working on topics ranging from zombies to augmented reality to marijuana pricing to the interaction between material and virtual flows in the economy. We'll be pushing some of this material out later in June and July.

We're also continuing to work on the languages of the geoweb with specific case studies in a range of locations such as Belgium, the corridor between Toronto and Quebec, Kenya, the UAE, France, and Spain. This will likely start coming out in August and September. But to give an initial sense of what we're finding, we offer the following look at languages in Europe...

We searched for the term "beer" in about 70 different languages -- some native to Europe, others from around the world -- to see what kind of patterns we could see. The map below shows the distribution of six languages that we selected to highlight the tight ties between online use of language and offline patterns.

The clustering of references corresponds very closely with the distribution of the speakers of each language, even languages that exist within a state with another dominant language. For example, Welsh appears within Wales but in few other places within the United Kingdom and Catalan is concentrated around Barcelona within Spain. The other interesting finding is that most languages have a micro-cluster of references to beer within Brussels. Whether this is due to the high quality of Belgian beer or the fact that the E.U. is headquartered there remains to be seen.

The Geography of Beer References by Language
(Red=Estonian; Orange=Welsh; Purple=Czech; Black=Italian;
Blue=Castillian/Spanish; Yellowish Green = Catalan)

Note: The size of the circles are consistent within a language but should not be compared between languages. For example, there are many fewer references to beer (or anything) in Welsh than in Italian.

Search Terms for Beer Used in the Map Above

The Floating Sheep Take on Casual Sex

Last week the OkTrends blog posted 10 charts about sex which has a wide array of statistics and graphics (essentially chartporn). As we know that FloatingSheep readers are a sensitive lot who can take offense easily, we will be relying upon a series of euphemisms for the act that Shakespeare so elegantly referred to as the "beast with two backs." Our hope is to be informative whilst preserving the dignity of our blog and readers.

We were most, ahem, attracted to to the surprising relationship that the OkCupid data showed between a country's GDP and interest in casual sex, as per capita income rises so does the search for a quick "trot around the waffle"...at least according to OkCupid.

Because it is the biggest free dating site in the United States, OkCupid has a unique look at dating and the ways in which people represent themselves and seek others. Moreover they have been extremely open about sharing their insights and amazing and surprising trends in the world of online dating. We're particularly amused by the relationship between the cost of college tuition and the number of times per week students desire to "wax the spoondiddle."

But as we are FloatingSheep (also known as geographers) we couldn't help but wonder what a map of the data from the chart above would look like. In short, "a cartography of casual carnality." So we geo-visualized the percent of OkCupid.com users per country that indicated an interest in casual "parsley padding."

So what could be behind this desire to "get one's wheels oiled" outside the constraints of a committed relationship? Is it simply a matter of income as the OkTrends data suggest? We don't really know the answer but we are able to visualize the relationship between the size of a country's economy and the size of its desire to "take a spin through the juniper." So in lieu of an answer, we'll make another map.

One can see how the size of the U.S. economy causes to bulge like a ripe melon (much to Canada's shrinking horror) while on the other side of the globe, the "miracle economy" of South Korea doggedly pursues a Japan whose swollen landscape of GDP is layered with a high level of interest in casual games of "hiding near the turnip."

But is GDP really the best variable to consider in this case? After all, individuals looking for a casual game of "bottle the carburetor" on OkCupid are, by definition, wired to the Internet. So rather than using GDP it might be better to use the number of people with internet access to determine country size. After all, you know what they say about the size of a man's broadband... faster downloads.

The result is remarkably similar to using GDP which we expect. But since the above map combines both the number of people online and the level of interest in casual hookups, it seemingly, albeit spuriously (not that it has ever stopped us before), creates a directory for would be trollers where they are most likely to find others interested in casually "grinding their Irish wappers." Again, the relationship shown in the above is rather spurious. More people are going to be looking for a casual "thrunking" online in places where, well, there are more people online.

A better measure would be internet penetration (snicker), or the number of people on the internet divided by the total population. Using penetration (snort) to determine the size (giggle) of a country results in the map below. Which seems highly suggestive (at least for a map) of some kind of global group effort to "hop the last train to Cleveland."

Initially, we assumed this would correlate with our religion map, but as it turns out, Americans just aren't looking for a casual "hauling of someone's tomatoes" at the same rate as Europeans.

However, by this point we are so confused by the euphemisms and cartograms that we're in a bit of muddle. I think we'll just wonder off for a quick lie down. No euphemism intended.

The Twelve Posts of Santa - Complete List

We had a couple of requests to index all our recent Santa posting and as we're always happy to recycle material, here is a handy listing of all twelve of the 2010 Santa Claus related postings. Enjoy!

• Part I: Defining the Search
• Part II: Santa vs. Father Christmas or (Who are all these old men with bushy beards?)
• Part III: A new Holy Roman Emperor?
• Part IV: En France, L'État, c'est Père Noël
• Part V: Italy and the Coca Cola Santa
• Part VI: Polish Puzzles
• Part VII: German Diversity
• Part VIII: La Navidad de España
• Part IX: The Low Countries
• Part X: The Balkanisation of the Eastern Santaspheres
• Part XI: The Underbelly of Christmas
• Part XII: The Most Wonderful Santa Claus Of All

The Twelve Posts of Santa, Part XII: The Most Wonderful Santa Claus Of All

We've studied Santa Claus in English (twice, even!), French, Italian, Polish, German, Spanish, Dutch and a handful of other languages. We even mapped references to various accompanying figures who dole out the punishments so that Santa doesn't have to.

But which of these representations of Santa Claus is the most prevalent? According to our tallies, plain ole Santa Claus is still the most wonderful of them all, as one might expect. But when comparing references to the top 10 versions of Santa Claus, a spatial mosaic of Christmassy cheer is evident, with each version of Santa existing in a somewhat clearly defined region, but with plenty of overlap. Just because references to Santa Claus are the most prevalent doesn't mean he can't coexist with alter-egos Père Noël, Weihnactshmann and Sinterklaas. Indeed, they seem to be getting along just fine.
Whether one is a Christian or not, the prevalence of Christmas celebrations around the world - not to mention the rampant consumerism built up around it - has made Santa Claus a lovable figure no matter what one believes, or even where one lives. But as we've shown in the eleven posts leading up to this finale, people celebrate Christmas differently in different places (and why wouldn't they?). But so what? What does mapping references to Santa Claus in Google Maps have to do with anything?

Like all Floatingsheep maps, we're attempting to connect the daily, lived practices of people to digital representations of those practices. By seeing that Polish Christmas characters show up almost exclusively in Poland, and similarly for any other country, it's easy to see how, while imperfect, the digital representations yielded by Google Maps are very much reflective of the many people's offline realities.

No matter what you each may believe, a Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

p.s. see you in the new year!

The Twelve Posts of Santa, Part I: The Search

Based on the names listed in our previous posting and the helpful reader comments (thanks!), we have completed our data gathering efforts for the 2nd Annual Search for Santa. This time, our search area is limited to Europe, broadly defined, and can be found in the white box outlined below.

Search Area for Santa Claus

Over the next week, we're going to start bringing you two posts a day mapping the results of this year's Search for Santa in a variety of different ways. For example, how does "Santa Claus" compare to "Father Christmas" in the U.K.? How do the various linguistic/cultural traditions map? Switzerland should be interesting. Are there differences between Catholic and Protestant parts of Germany?

The frequency tables for the data are below. Santa Claus still retains the lead, but Père Noël and Der Weihnachtsmann are close behind.