Comments on: Visualized news

By: David

David — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 18:55:49 +0000

Doesn’t Opensecrets.org already do a lot of this? Not that it couldn’t be improved significantly of course or that the data could be aggregated elsewhere…

By: Ellen Miller

Ellen Miller — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 21:53:48 +0000

These are all great ideas. We’ll pursue them here at Sunlight. And some of what has been suggested — by Jeff and Dan– correlations between money and votes and timing — is happening at one of our grantees:MapLight.org.

By: Don

Don — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 14:43:44 +0000

When using http://www.orderfromrandomness.com/ caveat emptor that correlation does not imply causation.

By: robertdfeinman

robertdfeinman — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 13:49:30 +0000

This site has an interesting way of graphically displaying correlations between data sets.

http://www.orderfromrandomness.com/

Pick to items and see how well they track each other. Lots of surprises.

By: Make Them Accountable / Media

Make Them Accountable / Media — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 12:04:42 +0000

[...] Visualized news Ellen Miller of the Sunlight Foundation wonders about extending the idea in the infrastructure project into her territory: tracking Congressâ€¦ How about mapping a politicianâ€™s donors to see how much comes from local support vs. outside interests (i.e., how much comes from Washington itself)?.. How about mapping that against corporate headquarters in industries (e.g., someone on a health oversight committee gets lots of donations from New Jersey because there are so many pharma companies there)?… What else? [...]

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Thu, 16 Aug 2007 10:14:58 +0000

[...] karta. Jeff Jarvis funderar pÃ¥ hur webbkartor kan anvÃ¤ndas fÃ¶r att illustrera politikens vÃ¤rld. Exempelvis kunde [...]

By: TLB

TLB — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 04:31:47 +0000

I’d like a source of state data, such as the contributions to people like Huckabee. I wouldn’t be surprised if those contributions taste like chicken.

By: Don

Don — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 01:45:05 +0000

Allow me to brainstorm by combining the first two excellent posts to propose an interactive timeline aggregation of contributions and votes. An automated association between a given contribution and interest in the outcome of a particular vote remains elusive. Hypothetically speaking Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) may passionately care about immigration bills that impact it's supply of cheap labor, but it couldn't care less about inner city health care bills. ADM's associative attribute would indicate a strong interest in immigration and a weak interest in urban health care. An automated association relieves a politically savvy person from the tedium of manual maintenance.

By: Kate Redburn

Kate Redburn — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 23:15:58 +0000

How about aggregating the congress trackers that exist? There are groups tracking very closely how each member of congress treats their issue, but few do a great job of tracking all members on all issues. An aggregator could fill that gap. Also, it could include data about lobbyist meeting/donation/fundraiser amounts and dates, and compare that to the voting records. All the info is out there, but it hasn’t been collected neatly. A visual aggregateor (timeline, graph, or map) could achieve this beautifully.

By: Fraser Mills

Fraser Mills — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 22:46:37 +0000

Rather than a simple animation I have always wanted to see an interactive timeline (http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/) combined with a goole map. So as the timeline is dragged to show a different period of time the google map updates itself to show the relevant points.

I think think this would be quite useful for what you are suggesting.