The ‘Republican Primary as Told by Wikipedia’ is a fascinating new interactive graph that allows users to see what issues have been on the forefront of the 2012 Presidential election based on the Wikipedia coverage, and which have been buried as a result.
The largely utilized website preserves all the information that has been input into the database, though changes are made by editors and users of the site. Throughout the election, the forefront runners -- Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum (dropped), Newt Gingrich (dropped), and Ron Paul -- have all had major events in the election that have affected their Wikipedia coverage.
The hand graph gives a great overview of what has been the most prominently mentioned, covered and forgotten about. Controversial issues such as the Romney’s dog Seamus (who has received widespread media attention) have been greatly edited and given a much more vanilla Wikipedia spin.
Crowd Sourced Political Responsibilities
The ‘Republican Primary as Told by Wikipedia’
Trend Themes
1. Interactive Political Graphs - Opportunity for creating interactive graphs to visualize political events and coverage.
2. Crowdsourced Data Analysis - Disruptive innovation opportunity in analyzing crowdsourced data to identify trends and biases in media coverage.
3. Editing and Monitoring Wikipedia - Potential for disruptive innovation in developing tools to monitor and analyze changes made to Wikipedia pages during significant events.
Industry Implications
1. Data Visualization - Opportunities for developing tools and platforms to create interactive visualizations of political events and media coverage.
2. Data Science and Analytics - Disruptive innovation opportunities in utilizing data science and analytics to analyze crowdsourced data and detect biases in media coverage.
3. Software Development - Potential for developing software tools to monitor and analyze Wikipedia changes related to significant political events.