Data visualization: Creating a word cloud

Transcript

1. JOUR 5200 – May 15, 2019 Trish Audette-Longo Data visualization: What are people saying about #ottflood?
2. • In many ways, journalism is the art of finding the story in the abstract.
3. • In many ways, journalism is the art of finding the story in the abstract. See: https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2017/10/25/home-ownership-rates- drop-as-more-young-canadians-opt-to-rent-census.html
4. • In many ways, journalism is the art of finding the story in the abstract. See: https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2017/10/25/home-ownership-rates- drop-as-more-young-canadians-opt-to-rent-census.html
5. • In many ways, journalism is the art of finding the story in the abstract. • But sometimes, there is a value in looking for – and finding – broader patterns. • For example, in Kevin Quealy's New York Times piece, what was accomplished by colour-coding Trump’s speeches about a proposed border wall between the United States and Mexico?
7. Word clouds • Word clouds can help you and your readers visualize how often words are repeated in a text.
8. Word clouds • Word clouds can help you and your readers visualize how often words are repeated in a text. • In a simple word cloud, words that appear most often in a text are largest, while words that appear less often can be very small.
9. Word clouds • Word clouds can help you and your readers visualize how often words are repeated in a text. • In a simple word cloud, words that appear most often in a text are largest, while words that appear less often can be very small. • You can find many free word cloud websites, and here is one: https://www.wordclouds.com/
10. • This word cloud is based on the text of Jason Kenney’s first speech as premier of Alberta, in April 2019.
11. • This word cloud is based on the text from Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s Budget 2019 speech.
12. How to make a word cloud 1. Copy the text from Column B of our filtered “ottflood2”spreadsheet – this spreadsheet does not have any RTs or media tweets. 2. Paste it into the word cloud site. (Paste/Type text)
13. How to make a word cloud 3. Click on “Word list” above the cloud to find and revise near- duplicate terms, like “ottflood” and “OttFlood,” as seen here. After editing, ottflood would be weighted as appearing 479 times and OttFlood would be weighted as appearing 0 times. Because the objective of the word cloud is to amplify words that appear most often, such revisions help clarify the data visualization.
14. 4. When you are finished, and happy with the colours and shape of your word cloud, download it as a png file.
15. Takeaways & questions?
16. Based on this data… • We are going to create three different data visualizations:  A map  A word cloud 3. A graph showing how #ottflood was used, to answer a question