Weather Map of Feelings
After collecting data, including news headlines, pictures from the top news stories, weather reports, MySpace/Facebook posting, Facebook statuses, and feelings, in Word documents in the morning and afternoon for two weeks, I combined this information into a Flash presentation. I found each piece of information provided insight into what was going on in the world and was very informative. I looked to see if the data that I collected formed a pattern of sorts and if a climate existed in the data.
When I put all the news headlines into the Flash presentation, I noticed that each day, the main headlines related to each other. For example, during the two weeks I collected data, the California wildfires, the Red Sox’s World Series win, and Joe Torre’s resignation from the Yankees were the most popular news stories. Each day, there were numerous stories that had to do with these topics. Because there were so many stories about them, it showed what Americans were mainly interested in. While the wildfires were severe and devasting for many people, some of the stories that were repetitive were very superficial, i.e. the Red Sox win. It seems that people sometimes focused too much on things that weren’t really important in life but on things that made them happy, such as sports. When they could focus on things that made them happy, they were able to leave the sad stories behind, including death and destruction.
I also included pictures from news stories that I found represented various stories. With many of these pictures, I did not include captions or headings. However, I think in many cases, it was clear what the news story was about due to the facial expressions of the people in the pictures. The sadness or happiness in their eyes gave hint as to what many of the stories were about. After looking at a couple of these pictures, it was easy to infer how people were thinking and feeling based on their faces.
I believe that everyday you get a chance to start with a clean slate and begin all over again. Every day is a new day. As a result, I noticed that more people updated their Facebook statuses in the afternoon rather than the morning. I think this is because after a long day of events and emotions, people had more to share about their lives. In addition, many of the Facebook postings people left in the morning were about how they missed whoever they were writing to. In the afternoon, people wrote things about their lives and memories they had of times shared together.
After completing my weathermap, I looked at Rachele’s map. She captured screen shots of weather maps, NY Times articles, and We Feel Fine in the morning and afternoon. She also picked quotes from the NY Times articles that exemplified some type of happiness or sadness and looked at different horoscopes for the day.
The screen shots were an interesting way to capture data to see patterns. The weather screen shots show how the weather (rain, wind, sun, clouds, etc.) moved across the United States. The weather that affected Ohio on Monday was often affecting New York on Tuesday. It was really interesting to see how it moved.
In Rachele’s data, I saw that in the morning, more people were likely to be sad and simply state “I am sad.” However, in the afternoon, people were more likely to be happy and give a reason for why they were happy. I think this is because happiness is a less complex emotion for many people. It’s easier to describe happiness than sadness because people are not so emotionally attached to their happiness as they are to their sadness. In addition, the screenshots of We Feel Fine allowed me to observe how many pople are feeling a certain way a certain time. I could count each dot. It’s really incredible to be able to do this because there are so many people in the United States, and it’s interesting/informative/unbelievable to be able to know how so many people are feeling in a given moment.
I also saw how Rachele created a gray-scale weather map for the background of the presentation. I think this equates to how the everyday is. Every day starts out blank. Feelings, emotions, and events (aka the colors on the weather map) make life real. Without these things, life is a blank map, waiting to be painted. I thought this was a great background to use because it showed how every day begins and then things happen to make it real.
After comparing our projects, I noticed a few similarities between mine and Rachele’s projects. Through the Facebook postings/statuses and the We Feel Fine screen shots, I noticed that people usually tended to be sad in the morning and reluctant to share why they felt this way. In the afternoon, more people felt happiness. When people felt happy, they were willing to go into detail about why they felt this way.
After completing the project, I would go about my data collection differently if I were to do this again. Unlike this time, I would use the same sources consistantly throughout the two weeks. For example, I used many different newspapers to get headlines and pictures, including the NY Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, etc. I think it would have been a better idea to just use one specific paper to see how that paper changed throughout the two weeks and what that paper chose to publish and in what way. I think it would have also been a good idea to incorporate We Feel Fine. It has alot of interesting information about people and how they feel about events in their lives. It would have been intriguing to see how feelings changed over a day and then over a week. In addition, I would have been more accurate in collecting data at the same times of day every day. It would have made the information more consistant and accurate.
If the class were to complete one giant weather map, I think we would definitely observe patterns across the data. There would be definite correlations between feelings and weather/headlines. I would be really interested to see how this would look if we were to create one giant weather map.
