IronSheep - Last Chance to Register

We have had a strong response for the IronSheep event on Sunday February 26th with a wide range of crowdsourced data offered by registrants (see below). Given that we've met our goal for a good cross-section of data, we're loosening the original requirement that "each participants contributes a dataset that is not commonly available". If you are interested we do ask that you bring something that could contribute to the lightning mapping exercise (mapping, design, programming, statistical analysis, banjo playing, etc). We'd rather not limit things but the physical space for the event is finite, so this is first come, first served.

If you'd like to attend (and have not registered) please contact Matt (zook@uky.edu) ASAP .

More details about logistics will be emailed out later. The main things are location (Pivotal Labs located at 841 Broadway, Eighth Floor, New York City); date/time (Sunday, February 26, 5pm to 9 pm)

Representative Datasets (as of 2/15/2012)

• Crowdsourced frequency of Pop/Soda/Coke use by points, zip code and city.
• Amount of data indexed within Google Maps by census track (NYC) and zip (US) for a range of search terms
• UFO sightings
• Bikeshare useage
• Global ecoregion boundaries
• Teenage pregnancy rates (New York state)
• Hometowns of NFL players
• U.S. political districts
• Flickr photos with keyword hippie, hipster, and redneck
• Number of geocoded tweets by census track (NYC) and county (US)
• GeoCommons has tons of datasets that can be tapped at the event

Guest Map: Ratio of Mobile to Fixed Line Phones

Nice map and discussion by Slate/New America Foundation on the relationship between fixed and mobile telephony. The darker the color the more mobile phones relative to fixed lines in a country. Africa, the Arabian peninsula and South/Central Asia really stand out.

It is worth a trip to the original map as it contains lots of good juicy data.

Cape Town Cyberscapes: Khayelitsha and the digital divide

For a recent project with Professor Stan Brunn, we updated and expanded our visualization on the cyberscape of Cape Town, South Africa (the original version from 2009 is here). Again this map was based on the amount of geo-coded material indexed in Google Maps using a fine grid of points approximately 1/10 of a mile apart.

This time around we were particularly interested in Khayelitsha, an informal (and fast growing) township in the Cape Town area. You can see it in the lower right of the map below (it is highlighted and vaguely boomerang shaped). The main take away from the map is the clear difference in amount of geo-coded material in Khayelitsha versus other richer, whiter parts of the region.

Map generated by Jeff Levy

Based on our previous work, this is entirely unsurprising. Nonetheless, it remains useful to visualize these inequalities at the metropolitan level in order to demonstrate that the digital divide in user-generated content operates at a variety of scales, and that even the most populated areas in terms of content are surrounded by areas with very little.

Online popularity of farm animals?

Returning to the age old question of "What is the relative online popularity of livestock?" we first explored eighteen months ago; today's post is a revisit to this burning question. I know that someone, somewhere has been wondering.

This iteration comes squarely under the "because we can" methodology and is simply the frequency in which the keywords, "chicken", "cow", "goat", "horse", "pig" and "sheep" show up in .com domain names.

Simple, elegant and proving insight to an unanswered sheep related question. Unfortunately it shows that sheep fall far behind their horsey heads as well as their bovine brethren. Even their chicken comrades and goat groupies are doing better.



So sadly, while we cannot foresee (ahem) flights of sheep everywhere, the pigs have not gained controlled as of yet! In fact, it is the horse and cow that is more to be feared.

Sheep of the world, Unite! You have nothing to lose but your fleece!

Beasts of England, Beasts of France-land,
Beasts of every land and clime,
Hearken to my joyful tidings
Of the Golden future time.

Soon or late the day is coming,
Tyrant Pig shall be o'er thrown,
And the fruitful fields of our lands
Shall be trod by sheep alone.*

* Apologies to George Orwell

Open invitation to a workshop in Amman: Middle Eastern Participation and Presence in Wikipedia

Your voice matters. Come and share your experience and opinions about Wikipedia with other Wikipedians, wiki producers, researchers, and representatives from the Wikimedia Foundation during a two-day workshop.

The goal of the workshop is to talk about and understand the most significant barriers to participation in Wikipedia in the Middle East and North Africa. As such, we would love to hear from you if you meet any of the following criteria:

• A Wikipedian who edits Arabic Wikipedia
• A Wikipedian who edits Wikipedia (in any languages) on articles about the Middle East
• Someone who translates articles between any of the following language versions in Wikipedia: Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, English, French, Hebrew, Persian.
• Someone who is eager to get more involved with the project, and would like to meet people with similar ambitions.
• Someone that would like to give a short talk or presentation to other Wikipedians from the region (e.g. about conflict or marginalization, barriers to participation, and circumvention strategies and tools).

The workshop will have limited space available, so we ask everyone to submit a one page letter detailing why your participation will benefit Wikipedia, the goals of the workshop, and your personal development as a contributor to Wikipedia.

Sessions and conversations will be held simultaneously in Arabic and English, and you will only need to be fluent in one of these languages to participate.

In order to facilitate participation, we have a small number of scholarships available that will support travel to (and in some cases accommodation in) Amman.

Please email Dr. Ilhem Allagui at ilhemallagui@hotmail.com and express your interest in joining this workshop. Please discuss your experience and how involved are you with Arabic Wikipedia, you may be eligible to a travel grant to attend this workshop.

Workshop location: Jordan Media Institute- Amman, Jordan

Workshop dates: April 11-12, 2012

More information about this project at: http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/projects/?id=70

Workshop organisers:

Mark Graham (University of Oxford)

Bernie Hogan (University of Oxford)

Ilhem Allagui (American University of Sharjah)

A flyer that you disseminate to interested parties is available here. And a version in Arabic is here.

دعوة للمشاركة في ورشة عمل بخصوص ويكيبيديا

تسرنا دعوتكم لورشة عمل بخصوص ويكيبيديا لمدة يومين و تضم ثلة من الباحثين و ممثلي مؤسسة وكيميديا، نتبادل خلالها الأفكار و الخبرات حول ويكيبيديا بمشاركة خبراء و منتجين و مهتمين بشأن ويكيبيديا.

الغاية من هذه الورشة هي تبادل الآراء و فهم أهم العقبات و الحواجز التي تحول دون المشاركة في تطوير ويكيبيديا العربية.

للمشاركة يجب ان تتقن اللغة العربية أو الإنجليزية كما يجب أن تتوفر لديك أحد الشروط التالية:

أن تكون :

محررا لويكيبيديا العربية ،

محررا لويكيبيديا (أي لغة من اللغات) و تكتب مقالات حول الشرق الأوسط.

مترجما لمقالات بأي من اللغات التالية: العربية الفصحى، العربية باللهجة المصرية، الإنجليزية، الفرنسية، العبرية و الفارسية.

راغبا في المساهمة الفعالة بخصوص تطوير ويكيبيديا عربي.

عازما على تبادل أفكارك مع الحضور من خلال تقديم محاضرة بخصوص المواضيع التي من ضمنها

الصراع و التهميش على ويكيبيديا.

الحواجز التي تحول دون المشاركة في تطوير ويكيبيديا عربي.

استراتيجيات و أدوات التحايل على المشاركة في ويكيبيديا عربي.

منضمو الورشة:

الدكتور مارك قراهام، معهد الأنترنت بأكسفورد-المملكة المتحدة.

الدكتور برني هوقان، معهد الأنترنت بأكسفورد-المملكة المتحدة.

الدكتورة الهام العلاقي، الجامعة الأمريكية بالشارقة- الإمارات العربية المتحدة.

مكان الورشة: معهد الإعلام بالأردن - عمان.

تاريخ الورشة: 11 و 12 أبريل/ نيسان 2012.

يجدر العلم بتوفر منح المشاركة لدعم مصاريف السفر و الإقامة بمكان الورشة بعمان الأردن (حسب الحالات). كما يجدر التنويه بأن الأماكن محدودة، وعلى الراغبين في المشاركة أن يرسلوا طلب (صفحة واحدة) في أقرب وقت ممكن و قبل 10 مارس/ آذار 2012 يتضمن عرضا توضيحيا بخصوص مساهمتكم في اثراء ورشة العمل حسب ما تقدم ذكره.

للمزيد من المعلومات و التسجيل يرجى الاتصال بالدكتورة إلهام العلاقي عن طريق البريد الإلكتروني ilhemallagui@hotmail.com

Mapping Cyberscapes of the 2012 Republican Presidential Primary

They've given us gems like "I like being able to fire people", suggesting that we replace professional janitors with dozens of children from working-class homes in order to cut costs. And a bunch of other crazy inventive stuff. In an indirect way, they've also given us new vocabulary words, parodies and re-interpretations. They've also provided the raw material necessary for a range of user-generated, web 2.0, prosumptive behavior. So even though you may be a little bit frightened, you should also thank them -- albeit not necessarily with your vote.

But with the Republican presidential primaries already well underway (and today being the Florida primary), we thought it a good time to dig a bit deeper than the superficial soundbites coming from the candidates. So in this post we're understanding the geography of these candidates via pythagoric numerology and haruspicy. Ha! Just kidding, we will be looking at the distribution of geotagged online content like always. After all that's the whole point of the blog and something we've done previously for European political leaders, as well as the 2010 election in the UK and the 2008 US Presidential election. Just sometimes we dream about a change....

So what are the geographies of the 2012 GOP primary like? Is it possible for these cyberscapes to help us predict election outcomes? Are they total hogwash? Just pretty colors?
Mapping references to each of the original eight GOP contenders, one sees that the two current front runners for the nomination, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, actually have very few references relative to the other candidates. It seems evident then that these cyberscapes show a lesser degree of differentiation between candidates than is evident in the primary results thusfar.

One of the clearest patterns is the plethora of references to Rick Perry across his home state and the very few outside of Texas. Given Texas' minimal influence on the nomination process, it's likely that he now wishes he was from Iowa. There is a similar, albeit much smaller, pocket of references to Jon Huntsman in his home of Salt Lake City, while Minnesota has a cluster of references to US Representative Michele Bachmann.

But most evident is the vast swath of territory, with no real conformity to political borders, that is dominated by references to Ron Paul. Libertarians are everywhere! It's nice that the federally funded national highway system is there to help speed their movement!

Even removing the candidates that have now dropped out of the race, Ron Paul's dominance in the cyberscape of the Republican primary field is evident. While Paul's prevalence in geocoded references isn't reflected in the polling numbers in the real election, it isn't entirely surprising. As we saw over two years ago with Barack Obama's disproportionate prominence in Google Maps content, Ron Paul's prominence online is certainly a reflection of his campaign's use of the internet as a primary organizing tool.

But since the electoral system in the US is really so dependent upon what happens at the state-level we thought it worthwhile to stray from our usual method of measuring cyberscapes on a more flexible, point-by-point basis and instead aggregate references on a state-by-state basis [1].
It doesn't seem, however, to make much of a difference in the relative visibility of the different candidates. Ron Paul's seeming dominance over the virtual landscape remains a fact, while Mitt Romney wins only his home state of Massachusetts as well as Utah and Alabama and Gingrich winning just his home state of Georgia. Santorum's "win" in Oregon is primarily due to his "Google problem", with numerous references to the alternative meaning in Eugene [2].

So, if one were to use this map as a prediction of victories in GOP primaries, Ron Paul would easily be the next Republican presidential candidate. Indeed, according to references alone, Ron Paul would have won each of the three primaries that have already taken place (of which he actually won zero).

This aptly highlights the difference between online activism and offline activism. Not that we really needed a reminder after all the protest events of last year. Moreover it will be some time (thank goodness!) before Google Maps can be used to predict presidential elections. Although we're sure that someone is developing an app as we speak.

But one thing is clear, based on these maps we feel that there despite his love of conspiracy theories about the New World Order, Ron Paul might actually be the one controlling the internet.

---------------

[1] States shaded grey are representative of no clear "winner" in the number of geocoded references to the candidates. Either there were no references to the candidates' names or at least two candidates were tied for the greatest number of references -- essentially the same reasoning as the many points with no dots on the other maps above.
[2] Which brings up the role of Google and code in how places are represented online.

New Article on Wikileaks Published in Antipode

For those interested in Wikileaks, a new publication (co-authored with Sue Roberts and Anna Secor) based on the Wikileaks mapping we did in December 2010 is now available. Drop me a line if you don't have library access.

Critical Infrastructure: Mapping the Leaky Plumbing of US Hegemony
by Sue Roberts, Anna Secor, Matthew Zook
Antipode Volume 44, Issue 1, pages 5–9, January 2012

Geopolitical mappings of the world can say as much about the vulnerabilities of hegemony as about aspirations to power. Mappings of US geostrategic interests are no exception. Recent national security priorities, the details of which were revealed in leaked diplomatic cables, include the identification of sites around the world deemed critical to the US (US Department of State 2009). From beaches where trans-oceanic cables emerge, to factories making vaccines, to maritime routes and ports, sites of particular vulnerability are assembled. The cartographic effect of this assemblage is a partial and highly distributed mapping of the fragile material underpinnings of US power.