Weathermap observations
For two weeks we had to collect information pertaining to the opposite words, happy and sad. We were to collect any and everything that had to do with them in the US. I mostly collected news articles, blogs, images along with some videos and some blogs from WeFeelFine. Through the collecting and organizing of the information in Flash, I came across several observations in both my weathermap and that of the other group members.
I found through collecting my data that there seemed to be alot more data surrounding happy rather than sad. This was something that I observed in only my weathermap and not my other group members. I’m not sure if this had anything to do with the method in which I was collecting data or what it was. I think had to do with more of people can put “happy” in front of many words and create something with it. “Sad” just didn’t seem to pop up all that often in the news as much for me, more so in blogs I saw it. This is the opposite of what I thought it would be because usually I think of “bad” and “sad” things as being more newsworthy than “happy” and “good” things.
I also observed in general the amount of blgos that exist. I had a much easier time finding data from blog entries than from the news. People seem to more than ever be putting their thoughts and feelings out in the public’s eye than ever before. I think its an interesting idea, because sometimes I think this ability allows people to say things that they normally wouldn’t say in face to face conversations, and that sometimes that is a good thing and sometimes it isn’t. I think some people will create feelings just to get a reaction or rise out of those that are reading their thoughts, while others are being honest in ways they would not have been if it wasn’t for the use of the blog as an outlet of their feelings.
In observing other peoples weathermaps, i noticed the opposite in the composition of happy to sad events. The other group members seemed to have a lot more sad events in their weathermap than happy events. Alot of their data revolved around death and tragedy. We felt that this had to do with the notin that sadness and despair sells. We felt that people like to read about those kind of topics and compare it to their own lives so that they feel more secure about themselves. They can look at the events and feel that “at least that didn’t happen to me.”
Another observation from the other group members weathermaps is that when happy was being used in the data, often times it seemed very superficial. People would just throw the word around, like this is happy and that is happy and I’m so happy. It never really seemed genuine, where as when people used the word sad, it seemed true. When people sad they were sad or this event was sad, it was believable. It didn’t seem like they were covering up some other feeling, if it was sad it seemed to have a true feeling to it.
