Reference Information:
Title: Connect 2 Congress: Visual Analytics for Civic Oversight
Authors: Kinnaird, Peter. Romero, Mario. Abowd, Gregory.
Venue: CHI 2010, April 10–15, 2010, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
Summary: Human beings love making order out of chaos, and there are few things more chaotic than the US political system. The authors of Connect 2 Congress have developed a website aimed at making the actions of congressmen and women a bit easier to make sense of, and follow ofter time. Using Congress's publicly available role call data, the authors worked with existing political anayalsis models, as well as designed their own.
Congress's role call data is very simple. It shows how people voted on a bill, Yes, No, or the impartial "Present", along with the bill's sponsors. Using this data alone, the system's designers can extrapolate a politician's political party, and show you just how far left or right they lean. The role call data is not the only information provided however. Using NPR's records, users can look up dates for politically motivating events, such as the Virginia Tech shootings, or drastic rises in gas prices.
The system was designed with four groups in mind, social scientists, political strategists and politicians, journalists, and informed voters. Social Scientists immediately recognized the usefulness of the system, as well as politicians. The system gives an immediate visualization of traditionally hard to examine data, and allows people to make more informed decisions. Journalists enjoy the system because it allows them to quickly fact check information, or to find interesting, previously unreported trends. Finally, the authors of the article believe that the system is a bit overkill for the average voter, but that it can give unique insights for those motivated enough to learn to use it.
Discussion: For anyone who's also been assigned the same last few articles I have been, I'm sure you can agree with me: Finally, something with Computers in it! This article was a very interesting read. One would think that something as simple as a yes/no vote would be rather easy to quantify, understand, and research. However, the obviously turned out not to be the case.
It's a shame that more projects like Connect 2 Congress do not exist. It was particularly admirable of the authors to stay as politically neutral as they did, such as their choice to use the government funded NPR instead of arguably biased news sources such as Fox New or MSNBC. Most political websites seem to be stuck in the 90s design wise, so thew newer "Web 2.0" style sites usually have an obvious agenda one way or the other behind them.
Hah, you said practically the same thing I did at the beginning of your discussion paragraph. With as divisive as this country is in regard to political party, I wonder what impact if any would result from software like this. Most people don't really follow issues and just vote straight ticket and with party lines. If you saw your Congressman leaning towards the other side (despite not knowing the issue), would that upset you?
ReplyDeleteI have to agree about the media. The news used to be about reporting the facts, not opinions. Most of the news I get is from the internet. Interesting enough, a survey was done and found that people that watched Daily Show and Colbert Report were more informed than Fox News or CNN, lol.
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