Project2::InfoVis::zackJW
What happens if you compare the language of government with the language of the rest of the culture? Well. You probably make a mess… 
Where am I coming from?
I was initially interested in trying to visualize DISINFORMATION while the world is ecstatic about new ways to visualize NON-DISINFORMATION, a.k.a INFORMATION. The hypothesis was that for every vetted, scientific, evidence-based government study conclusion, there exists an opposite conclusion with the same backing.
How and what came of it?
I initially thought that I would somehow try to visualize point-counterpoint in government officials perspectives. Global warming is a fact./Global warming is a theory. That kind of thing. That boiled down to the question, is it right and wrong or is perception truly reality. At that point I realized I could use the language of government as a cultural probe and perhaps find a relationship between their words, and ours. If perception is reality, then a representative government’s perceptions may be revealed by filtering their own language through the ultimate cultural barometer: YouTube…Government + YouTube =…you get the point.
What’s the process?
First, data. Transcripts of Executive, Legislative and Judicial proceedings were cooked down using tagCrowd.com. It’s a classic word cloud generator that boils thousands of words down to 600 words down to this: 
Inspired by Dan Shiffman’s text mirror, the words were put into an array then used to search YouTube and the first (non-promoted, non-featured) video was loaded into an array in processing. The comparison titles looked like this, Gub’ment words on the left…
able — God is Able
act — How to Act Good w/Hugh Jackman
american — Americans are NOT stupid – WITH SUBTITLES
believe — Cher – Believe [Official Music Video] [HQ]
bill — IPHONE BILL
business — Entrepreneur’s Mission Statement
care — Kid Rock-Care Music Video
change — deftones-change
clear — Cybotron-Clear
chief — Chief – Night & Day (2010)
company — Company( the Musical): Part 1
congress — C-SPAN: Stephen Colbert Opening Statement
country — Jason Aldean – She’s Country
court — Pepsi – King’s Court Super Bowl
economic — Economy key in Nevada Republican caucus
economy — Keiser Report: Starving the Economy (E243)fact —
federal — Federal BMX – Cologne
future — Future – Magic ft. TI
life — The Life (An anthropology graduate student (Denise Richards), guided by her prostituting neighbor (Darryl Hannah)…)
number — 10 Little Numbers
parents — PARENTS SUCK!
pass — PASS THIS ON
pay — Soulja Slim – I’ll Pay For It
people — Foster The People – Pumped Up Kicks
percent — Percent of a Number – YourTeacher.com – Math Help
program — The Program – Alvin Mack
give — Pitbull – Give Me Everything ft. Ne-Yo, Afrojack, Nayer
government — Alex Jones: US government spies on everybody
health — HEALTH :: DIE SLOW :: MUSIC VIDEO
help — Help! in the Style of “The Beatles” with lyrics (no lead vocal)
important — The Most IMPORTANT Video You’ll Ever See (part 1 of 8)
insurance — Auto Insurance
issue — Escape the Fate – Issues
jobs — Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address
law — LA Law theme
million — Nipsey Hussle “A Million” (Music Video)
money — Money – Pink Floyd HD (Studio Version)
question — System Of A Down – Question!
reform — Social Security Reform Bill Encourages Americans To Live Faster, Die Younger
rule — Take That – Rule The World – Official Music Video
start — DEPAPEPE – START(PV)
state — The State MTV: Louie “I Wanna Dip My Balls…”
statute — Lesson4- Society and Statutes Part 1.mp4
subject — English Grammar & Punctuation : What Is a Subject-Verb Agreement?
support — tech support
system — System Of A Down – Chop Suey!
true — Spandau Ballet – True
united — United Breaks Guitars
work — Ciara featuring Missy Elliott – Work ft. Missy Elliott
Some favorites…
The rest looked something like this…
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEyt9PEHHwY]
There are more questions raised here than answers and without a brief description the visualization doesn’t clearly explain what the viewer is seeing. Admittedly, I chose to use this brief study to explore programming skills I hadn’t previously undertaken. And not until I had gotten through them did I begin to explore the potential visual output. Even then, I was more interested in the vis than the info, but limited by my programming skills.
One interesting observation about the data, however, is that the language of government tends to translate into entertainment for YouTube-ers. Fully 54% of the videos were music videos for recording artists. Only 10%had anything to do with matters of government and three of those were jokes or conspiracy theories. According to YouTube, the government looks like a song-and-dance.
/*iacd 2012, Zack Jacobson-Weaver copywrite 2012 youTube files: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2exW2cUdC4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul86UVXqpxs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdULhkh6yeA&feature=fvst https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-ywH_1rUFA&feature=pyv https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ccjjt5OihM&ob=av3n https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL4MGwlZuAc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGqiBFqWCTU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLPlfODCBlI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJsd_Cvk_rw */ import processing.video.*; int videoScale = 14; int cols, rows, pCharCount, nextShuffle, b,c; int frames =5; int nextFirstLetter=0; String [] titles; String [] finalWords; int [] startChars = new int [100]; Movie [] videos = new Movie[9]; String chars = ""; void setup() { size(480, 360, P2D); cols = width/videoScale; rows = height/videoScale; //frameRate(24); b = 0; titles = loadStrings("youtubes.txt"); finalWords = loadStrings("Final.txt"); for (String s : finalWords) { chars = chars + s + " "; } for (int i=0; i nextShuffle) { nextShuffle += frames; pCharCount = (pCharCount + 1) % chars.length(); } int charcount = pCharCount; for (int j=0; j< rows; j++) { for (int i=0; i < cols; i++) { int x = i*videoScale; int y = j*videoScale; if (charcount >= startChars[b] && charcount < startChars[b +1]) { fill(255); } else { fill(255,45); } textSize(20); text(chars.charAt(charcount),x,y); charcount = (charcount + 1) % chars.length(); } } } void keyPressed() { if (keyPressed && key == ' ' ) { b = (b + 1) % videos.length; } } |
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Zack Jacobson-Weaver: GouTube
interesting idea that youtube is the “ultimate cultural barometer” . the connection b/w popular youtube titles and their link to gov’t related words makes for a provocative juxtaposition. also would have liked to hear these audio mashups.
I like this concept quite a bit. Original.
I thinkg it is an interesting research topic, and you clearly demonstrated your purpose/goal of the project in visualization.
nice approach and summary of your motivation
The “Goutube” name is a little ambiguous … is it “Goo-tube”, Gow-tube”, “Gaow-tube”?
^^Maybe change to Govtube?
Did you consider using the youtube video comments in some way? there’s a lot (and nothing) there … it’s a whole nother world (where everyone is insane)
I think this is a really interesting concept, well explained by your presentation. The final video is maybe a little disappointing but that’s alright, it made me think. I’d like to see it more professionally edited with a bit more creepy edge to it. “Political edge to it” – Golan
I agree with your self-critique; the highly specific videos called forth from highly generic words produces the look of a channel-changing mashup that doesn’t have rhetorical force,< --- there is a disconnect between the idea and the videos, between the concept and the associations we have for the videos themselves Interesting concept and I like how you walked us through your process. I agree that the final visualization asks more questions than it answers. I like the premise -- do politicians share the same language as pop culture, or does pop culture mirror politics, or is something else informing both…? David Tinapple - Debate Silences: http://davidtinapple.com/
Lenka Clayton – State of the Union in Alphabetical Order: http://plasticarmy.com/notes/the-state-of-the-union-in-alphabetical-order/ (video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xXn9q-6r4M)
First off, your idea is immediately quite compelling. I’m intrigued! Your process is really interesting as well and I enjoyed how it was an exploration of a concept and not just a simple visualization of an obvious data set.
I like how you explained your discovery process in the presentation, it’s nice to see how you got to the final product. Although I agree with the person below: it wasn’t really clear what the final product was in the video. It sounds like there is a lot of good thought behind the project that doesn’t come through in the visualization. There’s so much to explore with disinformation and political texts.
I like your idea and motivation for inquiry and also what you learned. I thik just the text is interesting more than the video unless the text is tied to the video / words itself in time. But I like the work.
I find the connection among government words and youtube videos really interesting. It would be cool to see what sort of correlations might come up if you run the same process for various countries.
I feel that the project and description are Interesting! ….but I barely was able to see what you made. The video lacked audio and was by brief and congested as it was not cropped.
I wonder how much the result is skewed toward music videos because that’s how youtube is skewed. I’m not sure if there’s a difference anymore, since they own youtube, but I wonder if a Google video search would yield more varied results.
I thought the presentation mechanism was interesting. It’s very compelling, even if it isn’t as informative as you’d hoped. I wonder what effect it has in terms of how it compels people. Associating a Deftones video with overtly political terminology seems very emotionally charged to me.
It’s a great concept, but I wish you had followed a little closer to the original idea, of specifically comparing arguments with their counterarguments. Obviously it would’ve been more technically challenging, but drawing more relationships between the subjects would have been more interesting.
Fake news is a really interesting route to go down.
this project is in an interesting topic area, and it seems that you have gained a good understanding of how to scrap data, but i’m not sure what the result is saying about the relationship/discrepancies between government and the “public” (you tube)
http://www.art21.org/videos/segment-paul-pfeiffer-in-time
This is semi related. Skip to 4min in. Paul Pfeiffer uses footage he shot of a NBA game and processes it so that the ball stays centered on the screen. The work itself then begins to extrapolate meaning. It is a more freeform approach of not knowing what the visualiztiong will become/evoke.
Question already sounds interesting – “How do you visualize disinformation”
I think if you are trying to combine Youtube and Government, why not just call it “GovTube”? Goutube sounds like GooTube which doesn’t really bring forth that Government idea.
I love this visulization where the word appears straight on the youtube video.
Also I think playing with the comments on each video would be a very interesting way to go verses just the tags. Especially with how opionionated youtube users typically are.
The visuals on your first sketches were very beautiful. Pulling the Shiffman sketch at a higher res into three dimenions could be an interesting sketch too.
I think you have a very interesting concept. It was ambitious and maybe a bit too broad. It may have been better to explore this problem of disinformation
on a smaller scale, say through the lens of a single speech. Maybe looking at a corrections list from a recent speech? I don’t know if that data exists. But I feel like you were trying to blend 2 different projects into 1. youtube as cultural barometer and disinformation in politics.
I appreciate the fact you asked a question with a social / political relevance.
Also, if you felt like the audio was more interesting than the visual.. Why not pursue it?
I think the comparison of the most common government word to that word as a search in youtube was really interesting and had some humor in the results.
I like the design of having the words over the videos, it makes you watch the videos very differently
so existential zack….
I think you have come up with an interesting way to browse youTube.