Current
Current is a real time data visualization of internet memes as they carry out life-cycle activities of birth, evolution, and decline in reaction to the daily news cycle. By visually anthropomorphizing the capricious nature of public attention we are able to spotlight missed opportunities in news coverage, and, potentially, recover news readership that has been lost to more sensational sources.
I came to ITP originally to prepare myself for a creative technologist position with some large, important media source, only to find that everyone already assumed that serious news coverage was doomed.
There seems to be a basic disconnect between how news sources are thinking about their readers. This last summer I was with the NYTimes Analytics department looking at ways to understand incoming traffic behavior, and found that, for example, the newsroom would be patting itself on the back for a spike in traffic on the day of an important political event when the real cause was an article about Neti Pots.
