information aesthetics

a visual categorization of news stories according to their reception in the conservative & liberal blogospheres. it also visualizes the level of emotional charge in the discussion of the news story or topic at hand in both political camps, & enables readers to compare different views on the same story from different sides of the political spectrum. the dataset consists of a link analysis and text analysis of a real-time feed of political-blog posts provided by the Live Labs Social Media platform.

the count of liberal inlinks to a news article are represented as a blue "wing" on the left, & the number of conservative inlinks as a red "wing" on the right. the emotional charge of the discussion around the news link is shown as a "heat indicator" on the outside of the wings. emotional charge ranges from a single orange square to 4 white-hot squares.

[link: research.microsoft.com & on10.net|via datamining.typepad.com]

see also presidentual watch map & 2 party senate history & mapping the electorate mood & fundrace.