Geographies of Wikipedia in the UK

After a lot of data cleaning and number crunching, we are able to present the following three maps of the geographies of Wikipedia in the UK using brand new November 2010 data. Looking at the first map (total number of articles in each district), we see some interesting patterns. With a few exceptions, it is rural districts in Scotland, Wales and the North of England that are characterised by the highest density of articles.

What we're likely picking up on is the fact that large districts simply have more potential stuff to write about. If we normalise the map by area we see an entirely different pattern. The map below displays the number of articles per square KM.

We see that most of the large urban conurbations in the UK are covered by a dense layer of articles. Most sparsely populated areas in contrast have a much thinner layer of virtual representation in Wikipedia. There are, however, some notable exceptions. Parts of Cornwall, Somerset and the Isle of Wight all have a denser layer of content than might be expected for such relatively rural parts of the country. On the other hand, one might expect a higher density in the districts surrounding Belfast (in fact almost all of Northern Ireland is characterised by very low levels of content per square KM).

Finally, we can look a the number of articles per person in each district:

Here some more surprising results are visible. All major urban areas have relatively low counts of article per person (with the exception of central London). In contrast, many rural areas (particularly areas containing national parks) have high counts per person.

There are obviously a range of ways to measure the geographies of Wikipedia in the UK. We see that some areas are blanketed by a highly dense layer of virtual content (e.g. central London and many of the UK's other major conurbations). These maps also highlight the fact that some parts of the UK are characterised by a paucity of content irrespective of the ways in which the data are normalised. Northern Ireland in particular stands out in this respect.

We'll attempt to upload similar analyses of other countries in the next few months. In the meantime, however, we would welcome any thoughts on the uneven amount of virtual representation that blankets the UK.



p.s. many thanks to Adham Tamer for his help with the data extraction.

Mapping the Tea Party Movement Online

Since Sarah Palin was recently talking about our blog on cable news shows, we decided it was only fair to map out her so-called tea-party movement.



It is interesting that the West Coast and the northeast of the country have some of the highest relative and total hits for the tea party. Perhaps this refudiates the claim that these are less pro-America parts of the nation. Or, depending upon your point of view, it may confirm that the coasts are out to destroy the country.

Also the patterns we see in the above slice of cyberscape, represented by data drawn from Google Maps, is matched by another slice of cyberscape drawn from Twitter. A presentation by Pete Skomoroch, Kevin Weil, and Sean Gorman shows the distribution of tweets with the term tea party. It shows Lady Gaga, as well, if you're curious (check out slide 68).


We should also point out that just because you can't see Russia on these maps is no reason to misunderestimate them. There's also a distinct possibility that we're missing out on a whole slew of geotagged data due to the misspelling of fairly simple words.

The Geotaggers' World Atlas (and cyberscapes, too!)

Having just stumbled across another amazing visualization of geotagged photographs, we figured we'd go ahead and share more of the stuff we've been looking at these days. The following map comes from Eric Fischer's The Geotaggers' World Atlas on Flickr, which, you guessed it, maps geotagged Flickr photos. What's so unique about Fischer's series of maps is that he focuses on how fast the photographer was moving when they took the picture by comparing time and date stamps on geotagged photos.

Geotagged Flickr Photos in San Francisco by Eric Fischer

In his maps, black lines indicate walking speed (less than 7mph), while red lines approximate bicycling speed (less than 19mph), blue is for motor vehicles on normal roads (less than 43mph) and green indicates freeways or rapid transit. Based on the repetitive tracing, it's possible to see the places within each city that have been photographed and geotagged most frequently. So how might these concentrations of geotagged Flickr photos compare to our maps of urban cyberscapes around the world?

All User-Generated Google Maps Content in San Francisco

Although the purpose and scale of these two visualizations are different, they both show a roughly similar concentration of user-generated content (in either Flickr or Google Maps) around Market Street in San Francisco. Since Fischer did this exercise for 50 different cities around the world, some of which we've already mapped using our own method, the comparisons between the two can go on and on.

Let us know if you find anything else interesting!

World touristiness map

Ahti Henla has produced a fascinating mashup that allows people to view the density of Panoramio images across the planet. The patterns in his visualisations look remarkably similar to the geographies of content in Google and Wikipedia that we have previously mapped out.

Head over to Ahti's site for the interactive map, or play with the KML file that he has also usefully made available.