Info viz

Dynamic Data Visualization for Interpretation of Social Networking Phenomena

brittenhouse6 — Thu, 10 Jun 2021 17:52:37 +0000

Dynamic Data Visualization for Interpretation of Social Networking Phenomena

This project seeks to understand the nature of misinformation on social media and its impacts on offline political behavior. Using the tools of computational social science, this project identifies, tracks, and detects misinformation related to the Covid-19 pandemic on Twitter. Examining how misinformation spreads relative to true information about the pandemic allows the project to understand why misinformation spreads, whether it can be detected in real time, and what its effects are on offline political behavior.

This project employed three undergraduate students for the summer of 2020 and fall semester 2020. These students were Gaurav Sett, Abdulwahab (Sam) Jarkas, and Lindsay Schurtz. The students contributed to building code to scrape and analyze tweets taken from the Twitter social media platform. Tweets were analyzed with respect to content that was deemed to be misinformation related to the Covid-19 pandemic. The students built algorithms to identify and track the spread of misinformation about Covid-19 from February 2020-June 2020. They were able to detect a sizable spike in Covid related misinformation in early 2020, which quickly subsided where it returned to a baseline of just a few percentage points of all tweets collected by March 2020.

The project has built tools and identified methods to detect misinformation in social media data streams. Further research will correlated the spread of this misinformation with public attitudes and violent events that occur offline.

brittenhouse6 Thu, 06/10/2021 - 13:52

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Publications, Exhibitions, Other Products

We have not yet published any research related to this project, but I have successfully received further DILAC and GTRI HIVES IRAD funding to continue the nature of this project by investigating the link between misinformation spread on social media and radicalization by social media users against the democratic process in the United States. This includes events like violent protests against public health measures throughout 2020 to the Capitol insurrection in 2021.

Project Year

2020-21

2021-22

Project Leads

David Muchlinksi

Students

Guarav Sett

Abdulwahab Jarkas

Lindsay Schurtz

Project Format

Visualization

Genre Tags

Info viz

Civic Media

Text Analysis

Contact Email

david.muchlinski@inta.gatech.edu

An Interactive History of Racialized Urban Development in Atlanta

brittenhouse6 — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 15:09:47 +0000

An Interactive History of Racialized Urban Development in Atlanta

Our project is an ambitious digital research initiative that archives and presents the discriminatory experiences people of color had to live with at their places, including where current Georgia Tech students reside and study.

With the digitization of redlining maps (https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/), its research body has increasingly grown in the past few years. Most studies have taken the approach that examines how the poorly graded neighborhoods still face various hurdles in contemporary community development for such metrics as access to credits, healthy food markets, and public health. However, with only a few exceptions, no research has studied the “lived” experience of the African American residents in the affected communities. Our project will restore the forgotten history of these residents’ collective efforts in a storytelling way by examining the local context of community development.

The history of our local communities exists in various archives. But it remains forgotten to a broader audience unless it is re-archived digitally and distributed and educated through digital media. This project will be the first initiative and database of its kind, documenting our local communities’ lived experiences.

Specifically, beginning from Summer 2022, our expected deliverables by the end of Spring 2022 are:

Digital contents will be spread over two main sections, one covering the broad history of the Atlanta metropolitan area and the other specific to neighborhoods, both organized chronologically.
City-wide maps, including the initial 1938 Redlining Map, its successors, and overlays of interstate or urban renewal projects, will provide visual context. At this broader view, spatial comparisons will be made from maps that show access to healthy food, schools, healthcare, transportation, and safety from environmental hazards. This information will be displayed in a timeline format; singular events and policies will be displayed in a standard timeline format. For spatial data, there will be an option to display it next to similar data from a different time period.
Sections covering specific neighborhoods in the form of an interactive map will take a more personal character. Prominent community centers, people, and businesses within each will be showcased, using a combination of historical photos, records, and quotes when they can be found. These sections will also take a closer look at how city-wide policies impacted individual communities, especially policies that had a visible impact, such as the destruction of black-owned homes and businesses by interstate projects. For these events, the narrative will capture “local voices” of residents at that time.

brittenhouse6 Thu, 06/03/2021 - 11:09

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Project Year

2021-22

Project Leads

Brian An

Genre Tags

Info viz

Civic Media

Project Site

Project Storymap

Contact Email

yan74@gatech.edu

Megaregions and Sustainability in the Global North

aanupam3 — Thu, 14 May 2020 02:20:47 +0000

Megaregions and Sustainability in the Global North

Megaregions – networks of metropolitan centers linked by proximity, populations, economic interactions, topography and land use patterns, and integration of infrastructure and environmental systems – represent a new stage in the evolution of human habitation from kinship groups to rural hamlets to urban metropolises. It is estimated that by 2050 approximately three-quarters of America’s population and employment growth will occur in just eight to ten megaregions. The Boston-Washington (Bos-Wash) corridor alone already boasts a population of nearly 50 million people and generates economic output exceeded by only six countries in the world. Yet despite their vast resources, megaregions are vulnerable to a variety of threats and little is known about the requisites for their long-term sustainability. The COVID-19 global pandemic has impacted megaregions in the U.S. and around the world, but a more persistent menace is posed by climate change-related natural disasters including coastal and inland flooding, landslides, wildfires, and drought. Approximately 40% of the world’s population lives within 100km of the coastline, which puts them in harm’s way when it comes to climate- change-related extreme events. To ensure their sustainability in the face of a variety of unpredictable threats, steps must be taken to build resilience to protect critical infrastructure for provisioning of food and water, energy, and transportation networks to move people, goods, and medical resources. This project aims to provide informed insights to assist in this critical task.

The project employs geospatial data analysis to systematically explore megaregion sustainability. Important insights will be drawn from the NASA Nighttime Lights dataset, which enables quantitative distinguishing of light intensity, allowing for accurate understanding of light emission from geographic areas, including temporal changes. This data can be used to map the changing boundaries of megaregions over time, filling a gap in the literature, as the precise boundaries of megaregions are unknown and constantly shifting. Once the boundaries are determined, it is possible to overlay other types of geospatial data to generate comparative data on a range of sustainability-related issues. The geospatial analysis made possible by this DILAC grant will bring an important new dimension to megaregion research.

aanupam3 Wed, 05/13/2020 - 22:20

Project Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N1CDeQhNy4cUA1hyFxKFVFrnYxPPyTsl/view

Project Year

2020-21

Project Leads

Brian Woodall (Professor, INTA)

Mariel Borowitz (Assistant Professor, INTA)

Genre Tags

Info viz

Contact Email

brian.woodall@inta.gatech.edu

An Interactive History of Atomic Models

aanupam3 — Wed, 13 May 2020 02:49:30 +0000

An Interactive History of Atomic Models

Link to the interactive demo: http://designstudio.gatech.edu/atomhistory/

The history of the atom is commonly illustrated as a linear monotonic improvement in atomic models driven by lone scientists. Such depictions have been challenged on the grounds that they paint a reductive picture of science that disregards the role of community, alternate hypotheses, and local circumstances in scientific inquiry. Yet, there is an absence of alternative visualizations that engage such factors. Drawing on Historical Research and Feminist and STS studies, this project aims to develop an alternative and interactive visualization of the history of atomic science that highlights these factors and their relationships.

The goals of this historiography are threefold. First, we aim to show how the subject-matter (and not just the context) of science is entangled in its circumstances and consequently, demonstrate the value of Haraway’s concept of ’situated knowledges’ to the historical analysis of science. Second, we aim to provide an alternative approach to the visualization of science history that goes beyond linear ‘factual’ timelines and embraces the inherent non-linearity, simultaneity, and diversity of scientific research while being reflective of its own limitations. Finally, through our process of reviewing literature on atomic history, we aim to investigate how and why certain scientific models are historically prioritized over others despite being comparably (in)valid in those times.

aanupam3 Tue, 05/12/2020 - 22:49

Project Year

2019-20

2020-21

Project Leads

Nassim Parvin

Students

Aditya Anupam

Genre Tags

Info viz

Digital Humanities

Contact Email

aanupam3@gatech.edu

Patchwork Poetics: Visualizing Poetic Sound Devices through Interactive Quilt Design for Learning

mmoattari3 — Mon, 11 May 2020 17:12:41 +0000

Patchwork Poetics: Visualizing Poetic Sound Devices through Interactive Quilt Design for Learning

Because scansion (the sonic patterning of poetry) is no longer taught as a matter of course in primary and secondary schools, students may find it difficult to discern and enjoy the beautiful patterns that poets build into their works. Part of the difficulty in teaching sonic patterns is that students are unused to thinking of words as material (in this case, sounds) rather than as conveyers of information. Patchwork Poetics is an interactive online application built to help individuals better understand scansion by converting these patterns into colorful quilt designs.

Working from research in craft-based HCI and textual analysis, and applying a lens of feminist data visualization, Patchwork Poetics is an online interactive tool that facilitates the learning process by teaching students to abstract meter, rhyme, assonance, and other sonic elements of a poem into color, shape, orientation, and other design elements of a quilt. With the visualization tool of Patchwork Poetics, students are able to transition from seeing word-as-information to word-as-sound, thereby gaining a new level of enjoyment and understanding of poetry.

mmoattari3 Mon, 05/11/2020 - 13:12

Project Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1w-acOq44Boe5QjF2_iYExi3VYQRtncx4/view?usp=sharing

Publications, Exhibitions, Other Products

2020. Sullivan, Anne, Katie Farris, Maria Elena Margarella, and Zehua Chen, "Patchwork Poetics." (un)continuity at Electronic Literature Organization Conference and Media Festival (ELO 2020). Online.

Project Year

2020-21

Project Leads

Anne Sullivan

Kathryn Farris

Students

Elena Margarella

Yijun Jia

Project Format

Visualization

Site

Genre Tags

Info viz

Project Site

Contact Email

unicorn@gatech.edu

Communicating and Visualizing Uncertainty of Climate Change Forecasts and Impacts

psingh308 — Sat, 27 Jul 2019 15:49:56 +0000

Communicating and Visualizing Uncertainty of Climate Change Forecasts and Impacts

This project develops a web interface to communicate and visualize the uncertainty of climate change
forecasts and impacts on the economy. This tool will disseminate a great deal of data with a high
degree of spatial resolution, in an interactive, informative and visually compelling way. This wealth of
data cannot be typically published in peer-reviewed articles due to space limitations and it never
reaches other scientists, policymakers and the publicat large. For example, it is now possible to
estimate probability density functions of climate change impacts on the economy at the county level,
for different scenarios of emissions, over different time horizons. These probability density functions
allow displaying the full range of potential impacts, including rare outcomes. Unfortunately, it is hard
to imagine how to display thousands of graphs or tables – one for each county of the USA – using
traditional methods. The application that will be developed will make it easy to quickly access large
datasets on future climate change projections and economic impacts, using interactive maps, tables
and animations.

Impact of climate change on US agriculture in 2055 – high emissions scenario – different
climate models.

psingh308 Sat, 07/27/2019 - 11:49

Publications, Exhibitions, Other Products

Emanuele Massetti. “Chaos in Climate Change Impacts Estimates” presented at the Southern Economics Association meeting in November 2019 and (remotely) at the European Geological Union Assembly in April 2020.

Project Year

2019-20

Project Leads

Massetti, Emanuele

Genre Tags

Info viz

Digital Humanities

Project Site

https://vectoraster.shinyapps.io/climatechange/

Contact Email

emanuele.massetti@pubpolicy.gatech.edu

Climate Change Visualization in the Arctic and Beyond

morangi3 — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 14:26:47 +0000

Climate Change Visualization in the Arctic and Beyond

Communicating the impact of climate change is a challenge, as scientists, educators, and journalists have noted. The effects are difficult to empirically observe; in some ways, they are everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Arctic documentary moving images about climate change can illustrate the negative effects of global warming. These images -- whether of thinning sea ice, melting glaciers, or rising sea levels are often used as “evidence,” sometimes paired with depictions of the social effects that the environmental transitions bring to communities in the Far North and around the world. The idea is that these images will generate cultural and behavioral change. At the same time, a substantial amount of data about climate change is conveyed through data visualization imagery. Some of those images are stationary in the form of maps, graphs (e.g., plotting), or charts, while quite a bit of data visualization consists of moving images, such as time lapse montages or dynamic 3D renditions. This kind of climate modeling and big data visualizations -- graphic moving image constructs -- tend to be mobilized as empirical evidence in climate change communication, yet like other forms of moving images, these are mediated constructs with their own histories and ideologies. Data visualization, has, however not been extensively studied as documentary moving images or as a distinct media form.

This project examines the interplay between climate change communication, documentary moving images about melting ice in the Arctic, and the procedures and assumptions of data visualization. In our primary research, we studied two different forms of moving images: timelapse photography and interactive data visualization of ice in the Arctic. We analyzed how certain visualizations can be more effective than others based on different theories of communication. To create a tangible product to test these communication theories, we decided to focus on ways to visualize climate change for Georgia Tech students. We believe that Georgia Tech students can be at the forefront of cultural and behavioral change when it comes to climate change. Our project focuses on encouraging students to think about climate change in their day-to-day behavior via an interactive visualization.

morangi3 Tue, 03/27/2018 - 10:26

Project Year

2017-18

Project Leads

Anna Stenport

Students

Victoria Chai

Genre Tags

Info viz

Civic Media

Contact Email

aws@gatech.edu

TOME: Interactive TOpic Model and MEtadata Visualization

morangi3 — Sun, 29 Oct 2017 20:06:17 +0000

TOME: Interactive TOpic Model and MEtadata Visualization

TOME is a tool to support the interactive exploration and visualization of text-based archives, supported by a Digital Humanities Startup Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (Lauren Klein and Jacob Eisenstein, co-PIs). Drawing upon the technique of topic modeling—a computational method for identifying themes that recur across a collection—our tool allows humanities scholars to trace the evolution and circulation of these themes across printing networks and over time.

Publications related to this project include:

Klein, L., J. Eisenstein, and I. Sun. “Exploratory Thematic Analysis for Digitized Archival Collections.” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 30.1 (2015).
Eisenstein, J., I. Sun and L. Klein. “Exploratory Text Analysis for Large Document Archives.’ Proceedings of Digital Humanities 2014. Hamburg: Univ. of Hamburg, 2014.
Eisenstein, J. and L. Klein. “Reading Thomas Jefferson with TopicViz: Towards a Thematic Method for Exploring Large Cultural Archives.” Proceedings of the Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) Annual Meeting 2012. Vancouver: Scholarly and Research Communication, 2013.
Presentations related to this project include:
“Developing and Sustaining Collaborative Research.” Roundtable. Modern Language Association, Austin, TX, January 2016.
“The Carework and Codework of Nineteenth-Century Abolitionist Newspapers.” The Digital Antiquarian, American Antiquarian Society, May 2015.
“Beyond the Digital Surrogate: Discovery and Analysis of Digital Collections.” Roundtable. Digital Library Federation Forum, Atlanta, GA, October 2014.
“The Best-Laid Schemes: Reflections on Three Years of the NEH ODH Data Management Plan Requirement.” Roundtable. Digital Library Federation Forum, Atlanta, GA, October 2014.
“Exploratory Thematic Analysis for Historical Newspaper Archives.” Institute for Quantitative Theory and Methods. Emory University, April 2015. Also presented at Digital Humanities, Hamburg, Germany, July 2014.
“Towards a Thematic Method for Exploring Large Cultural Archives,” with Jacob Eisenstein. Research Foundations for Understanding Books and Reading in the Digital Age, Havana, Cuba, December 2012.

morangi3 Sun, 10/29/2017 - 16:06

Project Year

2016-17

2017-18

Project Leads

Lauren Klein

Genre Tags

Project Site

Contact Email

lauren.klein@lmc.gatech.edu

The Shape of History

morangi3 — Sat, 22 Jul 2017 14:04:55 +0000

The Shape of History

What is the story we tell about the origins of modern data visualization? What alternate histories might emerge, what new forms might we imagine, and what new arguments might we make, if we told that story differently?

The Shape of History presents one such story, drawing from the understudied visualization work of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. The project combines original archival research with interactive visualizations in order to demonstrate how the tools and techniques of data visualization carry very specific assumptions about how knowledge is produced and perceived.

In Spring 2017, the project team launched shapeofhistory.net, an interactive website that guides viewers through Peabody's images and ideas. The team is also working to recreate Peabody's lost "floor charts" using physical computing materials. The floor charts were rug-sized versions of her images that she designed for classroom use. Follow the progress of this project on the DH Lab research blog.

“This project has been instrumental for me as an undergraduate student. Not only did it build me into a better web developer, it also taught me an invaluable lesson about working on real-world projects. The Shape of History [the funded project] was the first DH Lab project at Georgia Tech utilizing both graduates and undergraduates, and now every member of that project is connected to the following: a published paper, a completed website, and a peer-reviewed journal article… Programs like [DILAC] create success stories like mine. We need more programs like this-- programs which bring college freshman into the research community. I now have a lasting connection to research, in fact, next week I will be continuing work on our next DH Lab project. I could not be more grateful for this opportunity.”

- Adam Hayward, second-year computational media student, quoted in remarks delivered at the Digital Humanities annual conference, held in Montreal, Canada, in August 2017

Play Video

morangi3 Sat, 07/22/2017 - 10:04

Project Year

2016-17

Project Leads

Lauren Klein

Genre Tags

Digital Storytelling

Info viz

Digital Humanities

Project Site

Shape of History Project Site

Contact Email

lauren.klein@lmc.gatech.edu

VIP Project on Digital Deliberation

morangi3 — Thu, 06 Oct 2016 02:14:32 +0000

VIP Project on Digital Deliberation

PI: Michael Hoffmann

Goal

Our goal is to support the development of the Reflect! platform and further software tools that facilitate deliberation in educational, professional, and public settings.

Completed Work

Since August 2016, the VIP Digital Deliberation contributes to the development of the Reflect! platform which provides user guidance for reflective consensus building on wicked problems in teams of 4 or 5 students (http://reflect.gatech.edu). At Georgia Tech, a first version of the platform is currently used in PHIL 3127 Science, Technology, and Human Values. 42 teams of undergraduate students from across campus work on a semester-long projects on ethical and societal challenges of a wicked problem. Some teams work on facial recognition technologies in public spaces, others on robotic caregivers for the elderly. The Reflect! platform allows highly engaged problem-based learning (PBL) without the need of facilitators.

Future Plans

The VIP Digital Deliberation is a long-term project. After work on the current version of the Reflect! platform is completed, the next goal is to develop options for instructors to tailor “workplans” for student projects for specific purposes and teaching environments.

morangi3 Wed, 10/05/2016 - 22:14

Project Year

2016-17

2018-19

Project Leads

Michael Hoffmann

Christopher LeDantec

Students

Philip Abel

Genre Tags

Civic Media

Text Analysis