Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Journalists Explore City's Spiderwebs of Power Who really runs your city? A Richmond Times-Dispatch investigative report used social network analysis software -- as well as more than 50 interviews -- to try to answer that question. The special nature of the "They Run Richmond" news report required a sidebar on sidebar explaining the techniques used. The results included nine stories focused on Richmond's small, tightly knit group of leaders, including one that concludes that minority influence is not real power, and -- in the paper's online edition, a multimedia map (see note below) of the city's power network. The reporters collected information about community leaders' participation in arts organizations, civic groups and corporate board memberships, as well as a database of local political campaign contributions. Aaron Kessler, a freelance investigative reporter, used the paper's data and software called UCINET to generate the social network graphic, which, one story notes, looks "something like a collection of spider webs or a smashed windshield." [Found through Extra Extra! by IRE/NICAR] Note: The network diagram looked interesting from here, but some of the type was much too small -- either for my laptop screen, my current eyeglass prescription, or the combination of the two. Seeing the same images spread out on a big newspaper broadsheet could be more "user friendly" even though names wouldn't pop up and highlighted interactive links wouldn't blink on and off. Before I got to try the site again from a bigger monitor (see comments), Mike Prescott figured out how to break the Flash file out of its constraining page layout -- just use this address instead of the one on the words "multimedia map" above: http://media.gatewayva.com/rtd/multimedia/TheyRunRichmond/run.swf 10:29:30 PM    comment []

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