Problem

There are so many news stories today that it is hard to keep track of what is going on. There are a great many stories unfolding at each moment all over the world and it can be difficult to see how they fit together.

Approach

This project seeks to create a new kind of world map that is warped by events. It will consist of two systems: the first will aggregate news stories from a variety of high-quality international news sources and the second will use the location of each story to slighty deform an image of a map of the world such that locations with many stories appear larger. The project will also remember history, so a user can move through time and see how the map warps differently. This will give a smooth, continuous, clear graphical representation of where the media’s focus lies each day.

Additional functionality may include the ability to filter by themes, like political, entertainment, or scientific news stories.

Audience

The audience is for researchers trying to see what parts of the world were considered noteworthy over time. Trends may emerge as different regions become more or less relevant to the news and grow or shrink over time. I think this project may also be of interest to the general public as a way to better understand all the important events going on around the world.

Skills Needed

  • Curation: which news outlets are chosen as sources for the project?
  • Design: how can we design a map that looks good even under deformation, and how should we design the method of deformation to be the most useful?
  • Programming: how do we extract location from news articles, and how do we draw this deformed map on a computer?