What We Watch

• Technology: javascript (d3.js, backbone.js), python (Flask, numpy, pandas)
• Role: Senior Developer, Lead Author
• Client: MIT Center for Civic Media
• Collaborators: Ethan Zuckerman, Rahul Bhargava
• Publications:
  • Platt, E. L., Bhargava, R., & Zuckerman, E. (2015, April). The International Affiliation Network of YouTube Trends. In ICWSM.
• Link: http://whatwewatch.mediameter.org
• Code: https://github.com/mitmedialab/ytrends

What We Watch collects and visualizes the top 10 daily trending YouTube videos in over 50 nations. In addition to showing the top videos for a single nation, What We Watch allows users to choose a nation and see a heat map of other nations with the most similar viewing habits. Selecting two nations shows the, sometimes surprising, trending videos that those nations share.

In addition to the interactive visualization, we performed a network analysis, published in ICWSM 2015. Our anlaysis looked at the similarity between video trends in different nations. We found that trends tend to follow existing cultural boundaries, but that there are nearly as many trends that cross boundaries.

What We Watch was developed at the MIT Center for Civic Media in collaboration with Rahul Bhargava and Ethan Zuckerman. I was responsible for the design and development of the What We Watch visualization front end, and the network analysis. The project was primarily written in javascript, using d3.js for visualization and backbone.js as a web application framework. Data analysis was done using standard python libraries and R.