En términos populares is a real-time language analysis of web-based content, and exploration of non-traditional visualization will provide a framework for revealing the often invisible links between the official discourse, media coverage, and the fluctuations of people’s individual perceptions on reality in the context of Colombia’s armed conflict.
The goals of my project are to first create a new way of viewing the use of the language in web-based social networks in Colombia and second, generate awareness about the potential of on-line participation as a new framework for different kinds of actions, ideologies, and social relations.
In the first phase of this project I used a custom concordance application to find the most used words and determine keywords. I’m using the RSS feeds of the main sections of the newspaper related with the conflict and mapping not just the number of times that a word is used but also the connections between words in sentences. As part of my further research for this project I want to explore different mediums in that the project can be made public. In addition to web presence I want to investigate the possibilities of physically express the analysis of the information.
The first result of this research is a collaborative project with Ana Gutierrez, an installation in which the visitors are labeled via projection/video tracking with words that are part of the outcome of the text analysis that search for the most used terms to stigmatize civilians as part of the actors in the conflict.