The FloatingSheep meets Montana: The Epilogue

The epilogue to the photo essay documenting the adventures of the FloatingSheep (sticker) in Missoula, MT courtesy of Chris Van Dyke.

Of the following photo, the author notes, "I have to give credit for this idea to the FloatingSheep, who thought the juxtaposition of my shadow, his existence, and the river made for an artistic statement that was only slightly preposterous. Indeed, notice that the FloatingSheep has no discernible shadow – an ontological paradox or a deeper statement about the liminal and spectral quality of the lives we lead."

Fieldwork must really get boring....be sure to catch the entire presentation below.

Sheep in Montana - Part 2

View more PowerPoint from matthewzook

Zombies and Geography: Redux

We started thinking about zombies again recently (OK, we never really stopped) when a Kickstarter project by David Hunter proposed to introduce zombie based learning (ZBL) into middle school Geography curriculum.  At first David seemed just like our kind of guy, after all he says "I love geography, and I love zombies".  Cool.

However, we did take issue with his assertion that "I’ve chosen to combine geography and zombies because I don’t think it is a natural connection."  We, sir, beg to differ. To us, the connection seems very obvious and very natural.  After all, knowing where the zombies are is really the most fundamental question we should be asking.

OK, fake outrage aside, we wanted to throw our support behind this project (and perhaps drive some donors to it) but before we got around to finishing this post, the ZBL project was fully funded. So if money was no longer an issue (Ha! After this is a public school teacher) we thought we'd offer up some instructional material for the ZBL project.

As you are now figuring out, this is really a long way of revisiting our obsession research interest in zombies and geography.  We realized that we had failed in our mission to educate if someone like David could still think that there was an ontological distinction between geography and zombies. Clearly we had to better articulate the epistemological framework by which we select the construct and actants through which Geography is studied [1].

So, without further ado we offer up, all our zombie posts (including the serialized paper titled "Mapping Zombies: A Guide for Digital Pre-apocalyptic Analysis and Post-apocalyptic Survival") for your reading pleasure…..enjoy…

• Braainss...Maapss....Braainss....Zommbiess

Mapping Zombies: A Guide for Digital Pre-apocalyptic Analysis and Post-apocalyptic Survival

by Mark Graham, Taylor Shelton and Matthew Zook

• Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse, Part I: Zombies or Old People?
• Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse, Part II: Brains or Salads?
• Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse, Part III: Zombies in the Academy
• Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse, Part IV: Zombies in the City
• Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse, Part V: Artifacts of Zombie Elimination
• Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse, Part VI: Mapping the Living Dead
• Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse, Part VII: Vampires and Finance
• Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse, Part VIII: Voodoo

Festive Holiday Zombie Maps

• Santa vs. The League of Darkness (Zombies allied with Satan!)
• A few final holiday maps (that is if you consider zombies festive)

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[1] Since David teaches Geography in middle school he can use terminology like zombie based learning (ZBL) but because we're at the university we're required to talk about stuff like ontology, epistemology and actants.  But it comes out as basically the same thing in the end.  Plus....."Look OUT! there's a zombie behind you!" [2]
[2] Always a good way to get out a difficult argument, especially if you aren't making much sense.

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.

Hiring a part-time research assistant to do statistical, spatial, and social analysis

Mark is hiring a part-time Research Assistant to carry out research into the geography and social structure of Wikipedia in the Middle East and North Africa through large-scale data analysis. The position will involve the analysis of the corpus of Wikipedia text, user-pages and history files and the use of statistical techniques to explain spatial and social patterns. Our research question focuses on patterns of representation on Wikipedia as well as an articulation of patterns of conflict and barriers to participation.

The successful candidate will manage and perform queries on a large database, statistically and geographically analyse and visualise results, explore alternate methods to answer the project's core research questions, and assist in writing academic papers and technical reports.

Essential attributes:
• A graduate degree or postgraduate training in quantitative social science. Preference will be given to candidates in geography or sociology;
• Experience with statistical modeling, particularly regression analysis;
• Experience working with databases and large datasets (i.e. N > 1 million);
• Familiarity with GIS software;
• Familiarity with social network analysis software;
• Ability to work autonomously and be creative in the ways that you answer research questions.

Desirable attributes: 
• Experience visualising statistical, social networks and geographic data;
• Experience with text mining;
• Experience writing for an academic audience (i.e. journal articles and book chapters);
• Interest in and enthusiasm for the work of the OII;
• Experience working with publicly available secondary datasets.

The deadline for applications is June 1. Please get in touch with Mark if you have any questions.

(link to apply is here)

Links to our relevant Wikipedia projects:
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/projects/?id=66
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/projects/?id=70

Random map from the project:

The Floating Sheep meets Physical Geography and Missoula, Montana

A photo essay documenting the adventures of the FloatingSheep (sticker) in Missoula, MT courtesy of Chris Van Dyke. We hope that it inspires others to explore the possibilities of taking the Sheep on the road. Apparently presenting a Floating Sheep sticker to the agent at the rental car desk can provide a free upgrade to your rental.

According to the author, the photo essay "highlights the ontological constraints of the FloatingSheep and the ephemerality of human materiality perched against the bricolage of enforced nature. It also speculates on how the Sheep can positively dematerialize the presence, and possibility, of landscape."

We're not quite sure what that means, either (except perhaps that it gets a bit boring in the evenings)... but be sure to read the commentary underneath each of the photos. Simply brilliant. Note, this is coming from someone who went to Montana to study fluvial geomorphology.

FloatingSheep in Missoula, MT

View more PowerPoint from matthewzook

Mapping #Kony2012 on Twitter (Part II)

Following on from our last post about mapping #Kony2012 on Twitter, we also wanted to offer up a map that shows the proportion of tweets from each country that made reference to the viral video or the LRA leader (or both).

We've already seen that most tweets referencing Kony were published from North America, and Western Europe, but this map tells a slightly different story. We now see that despite the very low total amount of content coming out of Sub-Saharan Africa (see the map below or read this post about where tweets come from), there is indeed a significant amount of focus on the Kony issue there.

But it remains that this is still a discussion that was largely taking place online in the Global North. While the top five countries in our sample (20% of all georeferenced tweets between March 5 and March 13, 2012) are: (1) USA; (2) Brasil; (3) Indonesia; (4) UK; (5) Mexico; and (6) Malaysia, the top five in terms of tweets that reference #Kony are: (1)USA; (2) UK; (3) Canada; (4) Brasil; and (5) Ireland.

In other words, we see that while Twitter itself contains a lot of voices from the South, the discussion of Kony and Invisible Children remained firmly in the North.

***
Below are also included a couple of maps showing the total number of tweets published during the same period:

Announcing SheepCamp

Thank you all for your interest in SheepCamp.  We are now officially announcing this is a reality. 

Working with Big and User Generated Geographic Data

(aka SheepCamp)

 (gratuitous Photoshop opportunity, there will be no bales of hay involved)

Pack your laptops, sleeping bags (not necessary but feel free to bring one), and data as Sheep Camp 2012 will be held on the University of Kentucky's campus on June 15-17.  We will be meeting in Keeneland Hall, a residence hall at the university that has recently been renovated with meeting spaces, high speed WiFi and break out rooms. Attendees will stay in dorm rooms (single occupancy) with a shared bathroom with one other room. The cost is $26 per room per night and we ask non-students to contribute to this cost if possible. Graduate students will have their lodging covered. We're also hoping to cover a lot of the travel expenses for graduate students as well but to be eligible for this please contact Matt at zook@uky.edu.

We are encouraging those of you coming from New England, New York, DC, Pennsylvania, and the Mid-west to carpool.  We have set up a message board to try to organize carpools here: 
Carpool to SheepCamp Lexington

Our preliminary schedule is as follows:

Thu (June 14): Arrivals (as they happen)

Fri (June 15):   Bourbon Distillery tour (early afternoon)

                          Arrivals (as they happen)

                          Welcome dinner

                          Al's bar or West 6th Brewpub for lightning talks, (maximum 90 mins total)

 Sat (June 16):  Welcome message/meeting over breakfast,

                           Keynote/agenda setting talk

                           Skills workshop(s)

                           Lunch (informal discussion of theory)

                           Group project work

                           Dinner

                           Reconvening for some sort of un-conference type activity

                           Note: The  exact topics will be developed by the participants over the next several weeks.  But the general idea is to set up a research agenda for using and analyzing user generated geo-coded content.  

                  

Sun (June 17):  Breakfast. 

                           Group activity / Group presentation. 

                           Lunch / Awards (people start leaving)

                           Un-conference / Fun / Skills workshop(s)

We've been in contact with most of our confirmed attendees (who registered an expression of interest), but if you are interested in joining us and haven't been in touch, please email zook@uky.edu.