Floating Sheep in Comic Form

Have you ever wondered what it is like to take a classes at one of home institutions of Floating Sheep? In this case, the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky, a place where the land flows with milk, honey and cutting-edge insight with giant herds of critical GIS researchers roaming the tundra and bellowing out challenges?

OK, perhaps not. 

But it is a place where we have stock-piled Floating Sheep stickers and tattoos for the coming apocalypse. And sometimes these artifacts emerge and are reused and parodied by the denizens of the department.

Ergo [1], the following cartoon [2] has appeared in Kentucky, the work of the talented Emily Kaufman, Ph.D. student. And while the Floating Sheep collective would love to have come up with the "Computer is not a banana" as a metaphoric/allegoric/crazed bon mot -- if for no reason beyond its mysterious incomprehensibility -- we cannot take credit. This is the idea of Jeremy Crampton, who is actually the professorial figure featured in the cartoon.

And no, we don't under why a "computer is not a banana" [3] either.

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[1] What a great word, love to use that word. 

[2] Technically a mixed media collage of paper, ink and tattoo.

[3] We are in cautiously in agreement with this statement although we think the idea of a banana-based computer is great idea.

Cats and Badgers: Mapping the Final Four

Later tonight, the beloved Wildcats of the University of Kentucky men’s basketball team face the University of Wisconsin Badgers in the Final Four. And while the score will ultimately be settled on the court, this (sort of) rivalry can’t help but spread to other arenas. You’ve got the greatest tradition of cheese-making and beer brewing in the United States up against the greatest tradition of burning couches, making (and drinking!) bourbon and betting on horses. You’ve got those former Wisconsin-ites of Maptime Boston starting stuff with the good hearted Kentucky folks at MaptimeLEX. You’ve got new maps versus old maps.

Indeed, the map itself offers an important terrain on which to fight the battle between Kentucky and Wisconsin. The unsourced map below represents just the first cartographic shot fired in this war. While Wisconsinites might like to think that only their Minnesotan rivals to the west are the only ones that would side with Kentucky in this match-up, how are we to believe such cartographic assertions without interrogating the context of the map?

From what dataset is this map constructed? Why is this data aggregated to the state level, anyways? Why isn’t Canada similarly disaggregated into province-level data? Are we really to assume that such administrative regions are internally coherent in terms of their sports-rooting interests? I mean, UK even has a half-Canadian player! Even if we are assuming that, why are we assuming that Mexico doesn’t like college basketball, too? Similarly, why are there no gradations to reflect those places that might be relatively conflicted about who they’re rooting for? Why is there no context regarding the motivations behind such rooting interests (e.g., Michigan State and Duke fans who would much rather play Wisconsin than Kentucky in the championship game)?

Quite obviously, we can’t trust this map. Maps are fallible and power-laden and subject to the whims of the always-partial cartographer, in this case some Wisconsin fan who needed to make themselves feel good before a second-straight Final Four defeat at the hands of the greatest program in the history of college basketball. What we can trust, however, is that always transparent window into the collective social psyche of 21st century America: our database of geotagged tweets. This kind of data is objective and apolitical, a true representation of the world as it actually is. So, collecting nearly a month’s worth of tweets in the continental US from March 1 thru March 30 for the more-or-less official school hashtags of #BBN and #OnWisconsin, we sought to create a more objective, data-driven representation of the geography of Saturday’s matchup, as seen below.

Comparing #BBN and #OnWisconsin Tweets [1]

At the broadest level, #BBN tweets outnumber #OnWisconsin tweets by over 5x: 5,707 to 1,039. For a state that’s only about three-quarters as populated and a university that has only about two-thirds as many students, I’d say that’s a resounding victory for the Big Blue Nation. While each team dominates its own state (though we should note, there are some parts of Wisconsin without any pro-Wisconsin tweets at all!), those areas with more #BBN tweets than #OnWisconsin tweets are a bit more numerous throughout the country. Importantly, Kentucky fans have taken over key outposts such as Chicago and New York City, along with Nashville (the site of this year’s Southeastern Conference tournament), Cleveland (the site of the Midwest Regional) and Indianapolis, the site of the Final Four itself, not to mention much of the south, more generally. These are important strategic victories in the geography of basketball fandom this week, as the only other state Wisconsin fans have dominated apart from their own is Minnesota, in clear contrast to the stylized representation seen up above. Indeed, it’s quite telling that based on our hexagonal aggregation, no place in the United States has more than 100 more #OnWisconsin tweets than #BBN tweets: not even Madison, Wisconsin!

While there are still a number of places throughout the country where Wildcats and Badgers seem to be coexisting peacefully (thus far, at least!) -- and a good number more that seem not to particularly care -- we can say with some level of certainty that the members of the BBN are crazy and the Cats won’t be stopped on their way to another national championship. At least those folks in Madison are good at making maps! [2]

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[1] Many thanks go out to Eric Huntley, PhD student in the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky, for his help with this map!
[2] No hard feelings, Wisconsin fans. We love y'all. But seriously, GO CAYTS! And may we have another occasion to publish an academic paper about UK fans celebrating a national championship!

Mapping the #LouisvillePurge

The only way to introduce this post is to say that yes, a bunch of really naive and/or, in the case of the local television news media, willfully idiotic, people thought that there was going to be a 'purge' -- a 12 hour period where all crime is made legal -- in Louisville, Kentucky on the night of Friday, August 15th, 2014. Starting with a single tweet from a local high school student, things quickly grew out of control, with #LouisvillePurge becoming a trending topic nationally by the time things were all said and done. While the best tweets referencing the purge made light of the phenomena, there were many, many more expressing confusion, fear, bewilderment and a desire to save the poor souls who might have been convinced to participate in such an event. But for all the attention given to the role of social media in spreading the hysteria [1], there's been no attempt to look at the where some of these tweets were coming from, and how the news spread over space and time.

While the tweet that kicked the whole ordeal off was created at 8:32pm on Sunday, August 10th, the first geotagged tweet with the #LouisvillePurge hashtag didn't show up for another couple of days, at 11:33pm on Wednesday, August 13th. Beginning with that tweet, we collected all geotagged tweets with the hashtag through noon on Saturday, August 16th, at which point things were dying down.

The map below shows the overall distribution of these 4,351 geotagged tweets, aggregated to hexagonal cells across the continental United States. While Louisville and the surrounding areas clearly have the highest concentrations, the discussion of the Louisville Purge was truly trans-local, with less than 25% of the total number of geotagged tweets coming from the Louisville Metro area. Of areas further away from Louisville in absolute distance, Houston, Dallas and Los Angeles represent some of the highest concentrations of tweeting about the (non-)event.

All #LouisvillePurge Tweets thru August 16th at 12pm EDT

But perhaps more interesting than just the overall spatial distribution is how this distribution evolved over time, from the first geotagged tweet all the way through the cycle of hype and hysteria that led the Louisville Purge to be featured on any number of national news websites. In the series of maps below, we have divided all of the tweets in our dataset into a series of (more-or-less arbitrary) time frames that give a good idea of when and where the news spread to other parts of the country [2].

The lead up to the purge demonstrates a relatively localized phenomenon within Louisville, though it's interesting that there is some extra-local tweeting from the very beginning, with a very small number of tweets coming from outside the state in West Virginia, Kansas, Texas and Florida. There were only a total of 182 geotagged tweets referencing #LouisvillePurge in this 44-hour aggregate time span, with tweets originating in Metro Louisville representing 55%, 66% and 60% of the total number of tweets with the hashtag during the three periods, respectively. In other words, talk of the purge spread quite slowly over the course of the week.

Time #1: 42 tweets

From August 13th at 11:30pm to August 15th at 6am

Time #2: 36 tweets

From August 15th at 6am to 4pm

Time #3: 104 tweets

From August 15th at 4pm to 8pm 

The number of tweets with the hashtag exploded right around 8pm on Friday night, the 'official' start time of the purge. This four hour time period represents the peak of tweeting activity around #LouisvillePurge, attributed largely to the fact that this is when the event started to diffuse outward beyond the city's boundaries to places both near and far. One can see both a significant increase in the amount of tweets across Kentucky, as well as to far-off cities like Los Angeles, Milwaukee, D.C., Philadelphia and New York City. From 8pm to 12am, the 757 tweets from Metro Louisville represent only 30% of the 2,533 tweets across the country, further highlighting the spatial diffusion of information about, and interest in, the purge. In fact, this measure of locally-concentrated tweeting drops even lower to less than 10% from the hours of midnight to 6am (when most Louisvillians would be asleep), though it again rebounds a bit higher to 23% during our final time span of 6am to noon on Saturday the 16th, after the purge has 'officially' ended.

Time #4: 2,533 tweets

August 15th at 8pm to August 16th at 12am

Time #5: 1,420 tweets

From August 16th at 12am to 6am

Time #6: 216 tweets

From August 16th at 6am to 12pm

Like our earlier research on #LexingtonPoliceScanner in the wake of the 2012 Kentucky Wildcats basketball championship, we can clearly see an ebb and flow in the way the event originates in a fairly localized area before gaining a larger following and eventually slowing down and becoming more localized again as many users reflect upon the aftermath. But unlike the attention paid to the #LexingtonPoliceScanner in large cities around the country, and especially the South, the interest in the #LouisvillePurge tended to be somewhat more diffuse, without any single location outside of the city or state paying a disproportionate amount of attention to the events.

In the end, we're happy to report that all of the Floatingsheep emerged from the purge unscathed and thoroughly amused, and we hope the same can be said for all of you and your loved ones. And do remember, don't trust everything you read on Twitter [3, 4]!

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[1] Again, it's probably worth noting -- somewhat ironically, I suppose -- that despite the rumor originating and being passed around via social media, it was the traditional local television news networks whose willingness to believe and highlight the rumor drove further attention to the situation, which was almost obviously a farce from the very beginning.
[2] You can also access an animated GIF version of this time series map here.
[3] Especially if you are supposed to be a "real journalist"!
[4] For that matter, don't trust everything you see on the television news, either!

The Bluegrass Basketball Battle

In Kentucky, basketball means everything -- especially college basketball, and especially the intrastate rivalry between the Kentucky Wildcats and the Louisville Cardinals, one of the greatest in all of college sports. Growing up in Louisville, one can't help but choose sides and develop one's debating skills, arguing with classmates, family and friends over whether Patrick Sparks traveled in 2004 or whether Rick Pitino is the modern-day basketball equivalent of Benedict Arnold. But given our connections to the University of Kentucky (and Taylor's fandom), the upcoming game and the tools at our disposal, we thought it might be time to wade in on the age-old debate between the two sides.

A recent public opinion poll of Kentucky by Public Policy Polling piqued our interest, as it found that Kentucky fans outnumber Louisville fans in the state by an overwhelming 66% to 17% margin. But how do the two fanbases stack up on Twitter?

We took to DOLLY to collect references to the two general-purpose hashtags used by fans of each team and promoted by the respective athletics departments -- #BBN (for Big Blue Nation) and #L1C4 (for Louisville First, Cards Forever) -- in geotagged tweets created between June 21, 2012 and December 20, 2012, in order to measure the both the absolute numbers and geographic distribution of UK and UL fans at the national, statewide and local scales as reflected by Twitter.

Number of Tweets referencing #BBN or #L1C4

According to the aforementioned poll's 66-to-17 margin, there are ~3.9x more UK fans than UL fans in Kentucky. This finding is mirrored almost exactly by our measures of tweeting, where the 6,371 geotagged references to #BBN in the state are also 3.9x greater than the 1,628 references to #L1C4. And while the number of tweets for each team are essentially equal within the city of Louisville, UK fandom becomes even more dominant once one moves outside of the Commonwealth, with there being over 10.5x more #BBN tweets than #L1C4 tweets in the US outside of Kentucky, for a total of 4.9x more UK tweets than UL tweets nationwide. So not only does UK hold an ever-so-slight advantage within Louisville's homebase, it shows increasing popularity as one moves to the larger scales of the state and nation.

#BBN vs. #L1C4 Nationwide

But when we visualize these tweets, we get a better idea for just how geographically concentrated these patterns of fandom are. For instance, 599 of the 3,141 US counties had references to either #BBN or #L1C4. But of these, only 35 counties had a greater number of references to #L1C4, with Butler County, KY holding the dubious honor of being the only county in the Commonwealth with more references to #L1C4. Of the remaining counties, 554 had more references to #BBN, and only 10 counties in the country had an equal number of tweets referencing #BBN and #L1C4.

#BBN and #L1C4 in the Commonwealth of Kentucky

Also interesting is that no county in the US apart from Jefferson County, KY (Louisville and Jefferson County have a merged government, and so are coterminous) has more than 100 tweets with references to #L1C4, highlighting the essentially limited spatial distribution of UL fans. And though Jefferson County does have a few more UK tweets than UL tweets, one doesn't have to go far to find the county with the largest margin of UL-related tweets over UK-related tweets; right across the river from Louisville in Clark County, Indiana there are 20 more #L1C4 than #BBN tweets.

Meanwhile, Kentucky holds a decisive advantage in its hometown of Lexington-Fayette County, with 1,588 more #BBN tweets than #L1C4 tweets. But the county with the second-highest margin favoring UK is all the way south in Broward County, Florida (Ft. Lauderdale) with a +299 margin favoring UK.

#BBN vs. #L1C4 in Louisville

Within Louisville, the absolute number of tweets are almost equal, as mentioned previously; but, interestingly enough, the geographies of UK and UL tweeting are quite different. The clustering of #L1C4 tweets tends to be around the UL campus and downtown areas, while UK tweeting tends to be more spatially distributed, with many tweets coming from more suburban, residential areas in the city. So while the vast majority of UL tweets across the country are located in Louisville, a still significant number come from within just a handful of square miles surrounding the UL campus in downtown Louisville, perhaps indicating the limited appeal of a team that's lost four-straight games to the defending-champion Wildcats.

#L1C4? More like #L1C4.9xLessPopularThanUK.

UPDATE: See today's article over at ESPN.com, "The Commonwealth's great divide", which discusses some of the same geographic dimensions of UK and UL fandom we are showing here. It includes this interesting passage:

In 2005, the Courier-Journal polled fans on their sports loyalties and 53.7 percent within the city counted themselves as UL fans compared to just 33 percent who identified themselves as Cats fans. And according to the two schools' alumni associations, Louisville understandably has a far greater base in Jefferson County (54,872 living alumni) than Lexington (16,112). 

But here's the catch: There are just 22,160 living Louisville alumni in the rest of the state and other than Fayette County (where Lexington sits), none of Kentucky's 120 counties boasts more UK grads than Jefferson.

While we weren't aware of these figures at the time of our initial post, they not only tend to confirm some of our findings, but indeed only lend even more credence to our assertion that UK fans seem to be more voracious tweeters than their UL counterparts, as the roughly 50-50 split in tweeting in Louisville is significantly askew from the 54-33 numbers from the Courier-Journal's 2005 survey.

Mapping the Eastern Kentucky Earthquake

Last week's post on racist tweets in the wake of the US presidential election received much more attention than we ever expected. A number of questions about and critiques of our method were raised, which we attempted to respond to in a special FAQ with the post (first time we had to do that). Nonetheless, we thought it might be useful to demonstrate the utility of our technique on a less controversial subject in order to demonstrate how we can leverage a relatively small number of geocoded tweets in order to understand particular offline phenomena, and maybe even assuage some concerns about such an approach.

The 4.3 magnitude earthquake that occurred on Saturday, November 10th around 12:08pm EST, about eight miles west of Whitesburg, Kentucky, provides just such an example. Given our own connections to Kentucky, and the significant number of our own friends and family who tweeted or updated their statuses about the earthquake, we were naturally interested in what we might be able to bring to such an analysis.

But before showing our own results, it is useful to note that the US Geological Survey also collects user-generated data on earthquakes through their "Did You Feel It?" reporting system in which individuals contribute their location and experience with quake. The USGS then aggregates these reports into a crowd sourced map like the one below in order to visualize an approximation of how the earthquake was experienced in different locations.

Rather than use such a direct system of user-generated data collection, we fired up DOLLY in order to gather geocoded tweets referencing the earthquake in its immediate aftermath. We were able to collect 795 geotagged tweets referencing "earthquake" from 12:08pm -- where the first tweet we uncovered near Hyden in Leslie County, KY simply said "EARTHQUAKE HOLY SHAT" -- until around 4:05pm in an area comprising most of central and eastern Kentucky, southern Ohio, West Virginia, southwest Virginia, western North Carolina and east Tennessee (we limited our query based on a bounding box drawn around the epicenter of the quake).

This area includes several cities such as Louisville and Lexington in Kentucky and Knoxville, TN, as well as many more rural areas. As much of our earlier work has clearly shown, population centers typically possess a greater level of online activity simply by virtue of population size, so it was important to look beyond just the raw numbers of earthquake-related tweeting. Therefore, in order to normalize the data, we also collected a 1% sample of all geotagged tweets from the month of October within in the same area. This totaled 30,699 tweets, which we used to normalize the tweets about the earthquake and construct a location quotient measurement in exactly the same way as with the racist tweet analysis [1]. We again aggregated from individual tweets to a larger areal unit, in this case, counties.

First and foremost, though we did not use an entirely contiguous area, it is easy to notice that our map roughly conforms with the map of crowdsourced reports from the USGS, generally confirming the relevance of a relatively small set of user-generated data to understanding such an event.

Second, by looking at the blue dots representing each individual tweet, we can see concentrations within the counties containing the largest cities in the specified search area. These include Knox Co., TN (Knoxville), Jefferson Co., KY (Louisville), Fayette Co., KY (Lexington), Madison Co., KY (Richmond), and Cabell Co., WV (Huntington). None of these localities are particularly close to the epicenter of the quake in eastern Kentucky, but are more likely is a product of the higher population in these cities (increasing the likelihood that Twitter users would feel the quake and take to Twitter to report it), as well as their importance as regional centers with close social and economic connections to eastern Kentucky.

Third, and interestingly enough, there were only six counties where there were more earthquake tweets than there were tweets within the given 1% sample from October [2]. Leading this group of counties is Letcher County, where the earthquake epicenter was located. Letcher County also has a location quotient of nearly 100, indicating the fact that the earthquake generated a much greater than average number of tweets in Letcher County than one would expect on average. Each of the other counties, though possessing many fewer tweets both in the earthquake and reference datasets, are also located in close proximity to Letcher County and the epicenter of the earthquake. These include Bath Co., KY, Leslie Co., KY, Polk Co., TN, Johnson Co., TN and Rockingham Co., VA.

We can also look at patterns of tweets without aggregating to an administrative unit. In this case, we estimate the intensity of the earthquake tweet pattern (again normalized for what would be expected based on a random sample of tweets) in the region using Gaussian kernel smoothing. Interestingly, the 'epicenter' of earthquake tweets is only 6.7 miles away from the real epicenter of the earthquake (indicated by the red star). Not coincidentally, the center of intensity of our tweet map is located in the nearby town of Hazard, KY, which has a higher population density (resulting in more twitter users) than the more rural town of Whitesburg, the epicenter as measured by the USGS.

Ultimately, these results are not necessarily surprising, as they indicate both the extremely localized nature of a phenomenon like reporting an earthquake as evidenced by the greater location quotient values nearer the epicenter, as well as the essentially networked nature of such phenomena mediated by the internet in the clustering of user-generated internet content in cities quite distant from the earthquake's origin.

From a methodological standpoint, it shows that the fairly simple technique of calculating location quotients, or even the more involved technique of Gaussian kernel smoothing, can provide powerful ways of uncovering the spatial dimensions of online reflections of essentially offline phenomena.

We hope that this example -- which uses about the same number of tweets (particularly relative to the number of administrative units) as our racist tweets map -- will help alleviate some of the methodological concerns raised in our previous post.
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[1] The equation used to calculate the location quotient is as follows:

# of tweets referencing "earthquake" per county / total # of tweets referencing "earthquake"

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# of reference tweets per county / total # of reference tweets

[2] We should note that this doesn't mean that there were more earthquake-related tweets in the given time period on Saturday than total tweets in the entire month of October. Rather, this simply represents an indicator of how many earthquake-related tweets there were relative to the expected amount of content in that place.

Announcing the New Mappings Collaboratory

I'm happy to announce the formation of the New Mappings Collaboratory associated with the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky. It is strongly tied to the research interests of the Floating Sheep blog but also includes new areas of interest (see below) brought by the department's new GIS faculty. I encourage students interested in graduate studies in these areas to apply for study at the University of Kentucky.

“New Maps” draws upon both applied and conceptual traditions in mapping practices and mapping thought and represents a stream of scholarship focused on public engagement, “big data” and user-generated Internet content, as well as experimentation in place-based thinking, analysis, and representation. As a catalyst for mapping engagements on and off campus, New Maps works to promote creativity, excellence, and interaction around emergent mapping and GIS technologies. A range of faculty from the social sciences, humanities and natural sciences (in addition to Geography) are engaged with the New Maps project.

Current faculty and graduate students research projects/interests include:

• Collection and analysis of a range of user generated data including Twitter Tweets, Google Placemarks and Flickr photos;
• Analyzing the spatiality of online social networks through volunteered geographic data;
• Working with community partners to design and build participatory GIS and mapping tools and products;
• Citizen science in the production of scientific knowledge, including do-it-yourself aerial image capture using helium balloons and kites;
• Applying GIS techniques to the digital humanities and related disciplines; and
• Ethics, implications, and the use of geographic information and technologies in an age of ubiquitous location and surveillance.

More details on applying for graduate study are available here. The deadline for applications is January 15, 2012. Fellowships and teaching assistantships (including full tuition waivers) are available on a competitive basis.

For more information please please contact me or Dr Jeremy Crampton or Dr. Matthew Wilson.

New GIS Faculty at the University of Kentucky

We are quite excited to be able to announce the news that the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky (the North American headquarters of FloatingSheep) is welcoming two new faculty members (Dr. Jeremy Crampton and Dr. Matt Wilson) who do fantastic work in cartography, GIS and user generated geo-data.

Dr. Crampton's research has centered on understanding the role of GIS and maps as technologies of government in the production of identity (often race-based) and has developed several online GIS projects involving mapping of local communities in Atlanta.

Dr. Jeremy Crampton

Dr. Wilson's research activities are in the GIS & Society tradition, with a focus on the social implications of geographic information systems and the development and evaluation of Internet-based mapping solutions for community-based research.

Dr. Matt Wilson

Their combined presence will be a wonderful addition to the Kentucky department. We're going to have some fun!

Using Google Earth to think about urban development

As those of you who frequent the blog know, we're mostly interested in mapping and analyzing user-generated geographic information in the aggregate -- whether it be all the Google Maps references to a particular keyword or the number of geotagged Wikipedia articles within a certain country. From time to time, however, we like to talk about other interesting applications of web 2.0 spatial applications.

Although incredibly simple, one such interesting application for historical research is Google Earth's photo overlay feature. All it takes is an old map or aerial photograph and some free time, and you can begin to click and drag your way into comparing historical imagery with something a bit more up-to-date.

For a couple different reasons, I've been playing around with this feature quite a bit lately, mostly in analyzing urban development in Floatingsheep's North American home base of Lexington, KY. The following image is something I put together for some research my partner Emily has been doing on urban renewal in downtown Lexington.

The map shows a Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from 1909 overlaid on the area around Rupp Arena in downtown Lexington. In the late 1970s, a 16-acre neighborhood full of predominantly poor, black residents was demolished in order to make way for the parking lot that now sits across the street from the Lexington Civic Center and Rupp Arena, where the University of Kentucky plays its basketball games. And while a simple overlay can't tell the full story of urban renewal in Lexington, such a visualization is helpful in understanding just how much was lost in this particular case [1].

For my master's thesis research, I've used an old development plan for the University of Kentucky's Coldstream Research Campus to visualize just how much the plans for the campus have (not) been realized. Even though an exact date for the development plan isn't available (I've dated it somewhere between 1993-1996), it's possible to see just how little has actually been built at Coldstream in that time [2].

While these are two pretty basic examples that can't be totally divorced from the larger research projects they are a part of, they show the power of using web 2.0 spatial applications like Google Earth for other projects, especially those that have a historico-geographical element. Got any other good examples? Feel free to share them in the comments!

[1] It should be noted that the neighborhood likely experienced some degree of change in the intervening 70 years. The point, however, remains.

[2] Similar to the above note, the current Google Earth imagery for Lexington is incredibly out of date, circa March 2002, and several more buildings have been built at Coldstream since that time. Again, however, this does not refute the point at hand.

Graduate Studies in Aerial Ovis (i.e., Floating Sheep) Related Research

Have you enjoyed the maps and research we’ve generated at the FloatingSheep blog? Interested in the how the Internet and Geoweb is helping to shape our use of space and places? Would you like to explore your own specific questions related to these topics?

If so, the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky is currently accepting applications for graduate study at the Masters and Ph.D. level. While the department has a number of existing strengths within human geography (economic, cultural landscapes, political ecology, social theory) we are expanding into the new and exciting arenas of online/mobile mapping and critical cartography/GIS. This includes the kind of work we've been posting here but also takes on questions such as:

• How do we understand the impact of new data sources, new actors and changing authority behind maps?
• How do online social networks blend with material space?
• What does near ubiquitous geodata means for privacy/surveillance, power and democracy and the spatial organization of our economies?
• Is spatial thinking becoming a basic educational requirement and how is it incorporated into humanities, social sciences and natural science?
• What is the role of code/software on visibility in the Geoweb?

You can check out some of the academic publications related to floating sheep and a broader range of my own research. In addition to myself, the department is hiring two additional faculty members (names to be revealed shortly) who are both doing cutting edge work in this area. In short, it is going be a really exciting place to do this kind of research.

Students admitted to the graduate program receive full tuition waivers and stipends in exchange for working as teaching assistants. Fellowships and other funding is also possible.

More information on the application process is available here. Applicants should submit their materials by January 15 (I should have posted posted this earlier!) to ensure a complete review. If you are interested it would be best to submit by then BUT applications are possible after this date. Just be sure to let me know that it is in progress so I can keep an eye out for it.

If you are interested (or want more information) please email me.

Matthew Zook

We once were lost but now are found

Multiple posts (here and here) from last week documented the strange disappearance of the University of Kentucky label from the Google Maps based layer. Making it more intriguing was that the University was re-labeled as Transylvania University (see image below).

The mis-labeling seems to have been fixed (actually as we were posting last Friday). We're not privy to the how and why (we didn't report the error and Google generally doesn't comment) but we can take comfort in the fact that at least the city of Lexington didn't get renamed as has happened elsewhere.

University of Kentucky Labeled as Transylvania University (11/8/2010)

Multi-scalar Labels and the University of Kentucky

As we noted in earlier posts the University of Kentucky has been mislabeled as Transylvania University with Google Maps. (This post was updated at 2:00 pm 11/11/2010. See text in red.)

Further exploration, however, has revealed that labeling is apparently a matter of scale (Update: at least some of the time). Or in Google Maps terminology, as zoom level changes, the labeling for the University of Kentucky changes as well.

For example:

• At Zoom Level 12, the area for the University of Kentucky is shaded differently but no labels are shown.
• At Zoom Level 13, the area is labeled as the University of Kentucky. (Update: Or at least it did when we did this at 1:15 pm on 11/11/2010. As of 2:00 pm on 11/11/2010 Zoom Level 13 shows Transylvania University. See screenshots below.).
  
• At Zoom Level 14 (and higher), the area is labeled as Transylvania University.

2nd Update: As of 4:00 pm on 11/11/2010 the University of Kentucky label was showing up all zoom levels from 13 up. But there were still Transy references, see figure below.

This still doesn't explain why the University of Kentucky is mislabeled at the higher zoom levels. (Update: Or why the labels seem to be flipping back and forth at zoom level 13. Lucky number 13...)

The links above showed this change when we posted on 11/11/2010 but since the base map will change, static screen shots of the different zoom levels are below.

Zoom Level 12, No Labels


Zoom Level 13 1:15 pm - 11/11/2010, University of Kentucky Label


Update: Zoom Level 13, 2:00 pm - 11/11/2010, Transylvania Label



Zoom Level 14, Transylvania University Label

Zoom Level 16, 4:10 pm 11/11/2010 - University of Kentucky Label with Transylvania Reference

Where in the world is the University of Kentucky?

As we noted in our last post, Google Maps lists the the University of Kentucky as Transylvania University (an actual university, also located in Lexington).

University of Kentucky as Transylvania University
(you may need to click on the image to see a larger version)

So what do you get when you search for the University of Kentucky? [1]
It is apparently located at a McDonalds on the edge of town.

University of Kentucky as a McDonalds
(you may need to click on the image to see a larger version)

This image is based on a search conducted on 11/8/2010 via Internet Explorer at the default North American opening screen with a clear cache and no cookies from an office within the University of Kentucky.

Or you could get a listing (see below) that ranks things

1. Transylvania University
2. U.K.'s Maine Chance Research Farm
3. A location in Paducah, KY
4. A location in Pikeville, KY
5. The actual main campus of the University of Kentucky.
   

A Spatially Challenged Google Maps Searches for the University of Kentucky
(you may need to click on the image to see a larger version)

This image is based on a search conducted on 11/8/2010 via Internet Explorer via the wireless service at the University of Kentucky.

The plot thickens....

Did Nicaragua Really Invade Costa Rica because of Google Maps?

An interesting article about the power of maps. As the story is reported, Nicaraguan troops mistakenly entered Costa Rican territory because of the placement of the border on Google Maps.

I'm a bit suspicious, as it seems likely that officials in the area would have a good sense of where the lines of a disputed border were. Using a Google Maps border, particularly with low resolution data, seems more like a cover story than something that might actually happen. But who knows? Thanks to Zach Underwood in passing this along.


In any case it again highlights the power of maps in general and Google Maps in particular. Google has no official standing in terms of recording international borders or naming but exerts a tremendous amount of power, nonetheless.

In a much more prosaic example, the University of Kentucky has been listed as Transylvania University (an actual university, also located in Lexington) for a least ten days. A static image is below, or you can go directly to Google Maps (which may change). I will state for the record that Floatingsheep was NOT involved in this little map hack, we just happened to notice it ten days ago. We prefer that you not try to fix as we're curious how long it will remain.

University of Kentucky as Transylvania University
(you may need to click on the image to see a larger version)

Floatingsheep and the Open 2.0 Event

Those of you in (or near) Lexington, KY should check out the Open 2.0 Conference happening at the University of Kentucky. Lots of interesting speakers but in the spirit of shameless promotion, Matt will be giving a talk on the 19th at 9:00 am on "Open Geographies".

Mapping the Bluegrass cyberscape

Although it's been quite a while since we last posted our metro-level cyberscape visualizations, we figured that now was as good a time as any to bring them back. In some of our previous posts, we mapped the total number of user-generated Google Maps placemarks in our sample cities, along with some Crescent City culture-specific maps of New Orleans for Mardi Gras and other interesting examples from around the world.

Below you'll find maps depicting the location of all user-generated placemarks (using the keyword "1") and placemarks referencing "crime" in Lexington, Kentucky. Although Lexington doesn't hold much, if any, significance for most of our readership, it presents an excellent opportunity to ground truth these virtual references by comparing them to our collective experiences as current and past residents of "the Horse Capital of the World".

All User-Generated Content in Lexington KY

User-Generated References to "Crime" in Lexington KY

In the first map, the highest concentration of placemarks exists in downtown Lexington. More specifically, the points with the most placemarks (shown in red) are at the intersection of Limestone and Main Streets, a primary intersection in the city and the site of Phoenix Park (formerly the Phoenix Hotel) and the city's courthouses.

While the spatial pattern of all user-generated content is not surprising in the least, and largely mirrors what has been seen in other urban areas, the concentration of placemarks referencing "crime" is significantly more interesting. Rather than being a mirror of the more general pattern focused on the city center, placemarks referencing crime are focused on the Kirwan-Blanding residential complex on the University of Kentucky's South Campus.

Although this concentration isn't necessarily surprising, given the fact that the Kirwan-Blanding complex has been the site of some significant violent crimes, along with almost innumerable incidents of public intoxication and drug possession, this does represent an important deviation from common patterns of concentration within city centers, as was evidenced by the map of all placemarks in Lexington.