Submarine Channel
Rhetoric surrounding economic crisis is fertile ground for Unspeak, with a range of words from too big to fail to the fiscal cliff that make economic dilemmas seem both more drastic and mild at the same time. In the second episode, Money Talks, we dive into the state of today’s current events, thanks to words like bailout, austerity, Eurocrisis, fiscal cliff, and recession that have taken the world by storm since the 2008 economic collapse. If it’s not environmental “natural disasters” that we previously covered, then financial crises are always looming, and concerns over austerity, recession, bailout and fiscal cliff return every few months.
Much like Unspeak terms that discuss the environment and social media, which we covered in the last two weeks, terms surrounding financial Unspeak are also strongly linked to one another in the network visualization, showing strong connections between the Wikipedia articles for these words. What we also notice this week is that words in this episode are also closely linked to those covered in the introductory episode, such as disposition matrix, middle class, which we’ll discuss next week.
So what are the conversations on social media surrounding Unspeak about and when are they “hot”?
With ‘austerity’, which sees a spike in frequency mentions on Apr 23rd with a total of 7571 tweets, we notice a debate over stimulus versus austerity around the world.
A quick look over at the Newsmap visualization of news headlines related to the Unspeak terms we notice that Japan switches over to stimulus, versus the Eurozone, which is sticking to austerity for the time being.
Here we also notice more females involved in the conversation.
Overall, older age groups (31+) are those involved in austerity discussions, presumably because they’re mostly the ones being affected.
‘Bailout’, a reference to saving banks and countries these days, hits a peak in Tweets on April 12th, 2013, for both the frequency and context visualizations. On frequency, tweets are well balanced with males and females engaged in the conversation, and we notice again the 30+ age group is predominantly involved in the conversation.
The context visualization highlights the key issues being debated are Cyprus and the Irish bailout, along with Slovenia, which is seeking to avoid a bailout, as, confirmed in the newsmap visualization headline.
‘Eurocrisis’ talk involves mostly the PIGS countries – Portugal, Italy — and German chancellor Merkel. The conversation here is almost equally split between males and females.
On the other hand, the Unspeak word ‘PIGS’ makes no reference to these countries in the key issues on the context visualization, but always to the animal, discussing key issues such as slaughtering, swine flu, and laws to protect it.
‘Double-dip’. Now here is a comical one that we can say was nearly predicted by Poole himself with his definition eluding to the dipping of food, rather than somber economic times ahead that are heading for a repeat. In the context visualization we notice a resounding yes to the reference of dipping food, with key themes referring to extra coating of salsa, chips, avocado, burgers, a reference to pet peeve (from double dipping, presumably) and terminal germs. Interestingly enough, themes of debt ceiling and recession are also represented. Perhaps you could also double dip your money into the stock market one day?
Back to dipping references we come with the Unspeak word ‘recession’. With a peak of tweets in the context visualization on May 15 at 3,950, key issues discussed are a triple dip (must be worse than double dip?!), the recession dragging, economy shrinking, deepening across Europe, and sixth straight quarter.
By the next quarter, on Aug 14 the peak in tweets for frequency hits 12,183, four times the amount of the previous period, with predominantly males involved in the conversation.
A look over at the context and newsmap visualizations for the same dates confirms this is likely due to the updated key issues of: Europe edges out, ends for now, exists, economy grew, French growth.
This article is part of a series of articles that explore the results that Unspeak’s data visualization tools provide. You can find the rest of this series here: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 4. The data visualization tools, which scour social media and the web for Unspeak terms, are just one part of the Unspeak interactive documentary experience which also includes six video episodes and an ever-growing Unspeak dictionary you can contribute to yourself.
