29 Apr 2009 Showcases , ,

Heatmap of “Swine Flu” Tweets

Since the first reported cases, the swine flu has had immediate attention by the press. I think the media has a sever responsibility because the impact of the coverage seems to be huge on the public life. I wanted to examine the conversations around the topic and where these take place.

Over the day I’ve collected around 5000 15’000 geo located Tweets mentioning the swine flu. After having them mapped, we see Great Britain beeing one of the most active cities in Europe (it’s important to take the timezones in account). Berlin and Paris and of course Barcelona are the most active centers of the other countries.

Get Adobe Flash player

I’ll continue to gather the data and extend the visualization to represent different days on different daytimes. Combined with the data of the cases the correlation between media coverage and actual thread could emerge.

Share this article

Subscribe for more

Subscribe with RSS Join our 10282 Readers

Give Feedback

  • Magirus

    Very nice. Would be fine if you could display the actual text of the tweet on the circle. Maybe while your mouse is over them. Go on. Superb Website. A little more traffic could help ;-)

  • Magirus

    Very nice. Would be fine if you could display the actual text of the tweet on the circle. Maybe while your mouse is over them. Go on. Superb Website. A little more traffic could help ;-)

  • http://www.paznow.com/ Paz

    Doesn’t this also depend on the usage of twitter? I could imagine that Britain might also be the country with the most twitter users in Europe. Similar effect as you get with “we feel fine” when you enter a country other than Britain or the US.

    Nonetheless keep up the good work.

  • http://www.paznow.com Paz

    Doesn’t this also depend on the usage of twitter? I could imagine that Britain might also be the country with the most twitter users in Europe. Similar effect as you get with “we feel fine” when you enter a country other than Britain or the US.

    Nonetheless keep up the good work.

  • André

    Hi,

    couldn’t that be because in Great Britain the people speak English?

    If you search for “Schweinegrippe” I think this analysis will clearly be biased towards Germany, Austria and Switzerland!

  • André

    Hi,

    couldn’t that be because in Great Britain the people speak English?

    If you search for “Schweinegrippe” I think this analysis will clearly be biased towards Germany, Austria and Switzerland!

  • http://www.artillery.ch/ Wiederkehr

    @Magirus: Thanks for the suggestion. A version that is more focused on the actual content of the Tweets is on it’s way.

    @Paz & André: These both are very valid arguments and must be considered while analyzing the data shown on the map. The visualization doesn’t claim to be complete – also because the data isn’t a full-blown scrape but rather a snap sample using the most common term used for the N1H1 virus spreading these days.
    The reason why I searched for “swineflu” was that the majority of conversations over Twitter are being held in english.

  • http://artillery.ch Benjamin Wiederkehr

    @Magirus: Thanks for the suggestion. A version that is more focused on the actual content of the Tweets is on it’s way.

    @Paz & André: These both are very valid arguments and must be considered while analyzing the data shown on the map. The visualization doesn’t claim to be complete – also because the data isn’t a full-blown scrape but rather a snap sample using the most common term used for the N1H1 virus spreading these days.
    The reason why I searched for “swineflu” was that the majority of conversations over Twitter are being held in english.

  • http://foomandoonian.net/ Foomandoonian

    I’d be interested in comparing this with actual outbreaks, to see how much is unwarranted panic.

    Great site here, BTW!

    • http://www.artillery.ch/ Wiederkehr

      @Foomandoonian: Good suggestion. I could imagine an overlay with the actual outbrakes would make the data (even in this rough form) more useful.

  • http://foomandoonian.net/ Foomandoonian

    I’d be interested in comparing this with actual outbreaks, to see how much is unwarranted panic.

    Great site here, BTW!

    • http://artillery.ch Benjamin Wiederkehr

      @Foomandoonian: Good suggestion. I could imagine an overlay with the actual outbrakes would make the data (even in this rough form) more useful.

  • Pingback: “Swine Flu” Heatmap 1.1 on Datavisualization.ch