Tag Archives for data journalism

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Print is dying. Seriously.

Every journalist knows print is dying, but we still sometimes struggle to grasp the magnitude of the problem. While working on a broader project looking at changes in media consumption, I ended up putting together a chart showing per capita newspaper earnings in America – and the drop that begins in 2005 is simply stunning.

Per capita spending on daily newspapers (measured by newspaper earnings) over time.

Per capita spending on daily newspapers (measured by newspaper earnings) over time.

My storyboard has some more info, but quite frankly, that chart alone is worth the price of admission.

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College Students on Ashley Madison

“Grace” was in a religion class when she opened up her e-mail and found out that someone had pranked her by making her an account on Ashley Madison, the infidelity-themed web site. She’d had no idea until that day in April, 2013 when she looked through her e-mails and saw that three men on the site had sent her “winks.”

ashley madison account hidden confirmWithin the day, she’d requested that Ashley Madison delete her account. They agreed, and told her it would be “hidden” from the service. It wasn’t until Grace was contacted for this story that she even realized her data was still out there, and had become part of the Ashley Madison data breach and leak.

The 7 Year Itch everyone

Age distribution at the time of joining Ashley Madison, based on data from the Ashley Madison leaked databases. Men in orange, women in blue.

While the majority of Ashley Madison users were older, the site boasted millions of members, and drew that membership from all age ranges – including college students. At first, this seems strange, given that few college students are married. Therefore, they wouldn’t seem like the natural demographic to join a site whose motto is, “Life is short, have an affair.”

However, what college students lack in married malaise, they more than make up for in curiosity. Joshua Ullom seems to typify this group, saying that he and some friends made an account for “drunken laughs.” They didn’t talk to anyone on the site, and Ullom says that the absurdity of the entire thing was hard to get past.

“We were just talking about how crazy the whole concept of the website was and just wanted to look around.”

Other stories are similar. Most report being curious or bored, or stunned that such a brazen infidelity site could exist. Several hinted that they might have really tried the site, but refused to take part in the story.

Then there’s Bryan Pauley.

Pauley was a student at Kent State university when he signed up, and he signed up hoping to meet women. He said that he was intrigued by the site’s “guaranteed” results. Having tried several free dating sites at the time and found that they seemed filled by people who were “catfishing,” Pauley decided that he would try something else, and see if a paid dating site was any better.

Ashley Madison and women at signup

Distribution curve for women. Very similar to men, including the spike of membership from people who were 36 (or *claimed* they were 36) when they signed up.

Pauley’s hopes were disappointed.

He quickly found himself interacting with strange profiles that seemed to just “string you along.”

He said that these profiles all followed a similar pattern: A woman would message him, but refuse to ever send new pictures, or talk on the phone, or meet, or even chat on AOL Instant Messenger, which he said was very popular at the time.

Pauley believes that one of the profiles he exchanged messages with was an actual, honest, breathing woman – unlike the others, which he said he believes might have been fake profiles, meant to keep him interested and on the site. This seemingly authentic woman reported that she’d gone on a few dates with men she met through Ashley Madison, but the men were always “too aggressive.” Eventually, she stopped talking to Pauley, and after three months or so, Pauley closed his account and gave up on Ashley Madison.

The 7 Year Itch men

Age distribution for men when they joined Ashley Madison. Same jump at age 36, and if you compare the *scale* of the male distribution curve, you’ll see that there’s roughly a five-fold difference in the number of men than women on the site. This may explain some of the “aggresssion” the woman Pauley corresponded with described.

“I just canceled it, and didn’t try online dating for several years,” Pauley said.

Others said that they never went as far as Pauley, with many saying that they quit as soon as they realized they’d have to pay to properly join.

Anthony Buck, a student at the University of Alabama at the time, said he signed up because his friends were hanging out and couldn’t believe that there was actually a site specifically for having an affair.

“My friends and I were all gathered around, and I guess I was the guinea pig,” Buck said. “I signed up once, and never got on again. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t even able to view anything ’cause I wasn’t about to pay for the membership.”

Grace’s single day of membership was more than enough for her. She says she’s offended that her data is still out there, that this prank profile has come back from her past.

“I said, please, permanently remove anything associated with this name and this e-mail address, and they didn’t,” Grace said. “That’s not okay. I don’t like that. I know they suck.”

Click on the map below to get an interactive view of colleges around the country with e-mail addresses in the leak!

Map shows total number of matching e-mail addresses for colleges and universities across the country. Note that there is no way to know how many of those e-mail addresses were used deliberately by their owners.

Map shows total number of matching e-mail addresses for colleges and universities across the country. Note that there is no way to know how many of those e-mail addresses were used deliberately by their owners.

No neutrality for Swiss Americans

Swiss_AmericansSoon I’ll wrap this series up – but first, we need to take a look at Swiss-Americans, and their reverence for the Mason-Dixon line.

The Swiss aren’t particularly common in America, but they’re notably sparse in the South. Apparently, whatever brought those with Swiss ancestry to the United States didn’t involve a love of sweet tea and kudzu.

Link to full Swiss tableau: https://public.tableausoftware.com/views/supercensus/SwissAmericans?:embed=y&:display_count=no

Slovak-Americans

slovaksSlovaks can be found, for the most part, in a band which stretches from the Ohio Great Lakes east through Pennsylvania and parts of New York State.

Not particularly plentiful, and largely absent from much of the country, I decided to break with tradition and crop the Slovak map just a bit to make it easier to see the spots where they settled. The map isn’t perfect – one flaw is that I would need to make the coloration layer transparent if I wanted to allow city names and so forth to come through – but doing so makes it more difficult to spot the ethnic density coloration, so I’ve resisted the temptation up to this point. Try the Tableau tool so you can mouse over spots and get geographic information.

Link to Tableau tool:

Swedish-Americans

Swedish_AmericansIf you want to find Swedes in America, head to Minnesota. While Swedes can be found across the plains states, they are concentrated in the Minnesota region.

Link to full tool: https://public.tableausoftware.com/views/supercensus/SwedishAmericans?:embed=y&:display_count=no

Russian Americans

RussiansI expected to see a strong concentration of Russians on the East Coast near New York City, for whatever reason. I was wrong. The region of the United States with the highest percentage of Russian ancestry is actually off in the Dakotas – perhaps testimony to the Russian ability to live through blistering summers and polar winters… Or perhaps not. Either way, I was surprised by the results – and that’s always a good thing.

Link to full Tableau tool:

Portuguese-Americans

Portuguese_AmericansThe Portuguese favor two locations in the United States – Massachusetts, and Southern California. Outside of those small enclaves, they’re nearly nonexistent, creating a vast empty expanse when mapped.

I would imagine someone with some knowledge of Portuguese history could shed some light on why their descendents are found in those areas – the map, as it stands, is just a tantalizing clue in need of further explanation.

Link to full Tableau tool:

American Americans

American_AmericansAfter spending some time looking at ethnic heritage in America, it’s time to turn to a new demographic: Those who respond, when asked for their ethnic background by the census, as “American.”

This ethnic/ancestral type reflects, presumably, Americans who no longer know, or no longer care, about the various derivations which contribute to their family trees. They’ve become a modern, generic homogenized ethnicity – the American-American.

I suspect I’m close to joining the American-Americans. I’m a little hazy on my family tree, beyond the knowledge that I’ve got some German, some Welsh, some Scottish and English progenitors. With such vague, and diverse, roots, simply calling myself “American” makes more and more sense to me.

Link to the full map & tool: https://public.tableausoftware.com/views/supercensus/AmericanAmericans?:embed=y&:display_count=no

Polish-Americans

PolishPolish-Americans are highly concentrated among the Great Lakes region of the United States, showing much less diffusion than some of the other ancestries I’ve looked at, like the Irish.

Aside from their fairly specific geographic distribution, the Polish-American population doesn’t hold many surprises. I had thought there’d be more Poles, but one problem with preconceptions about ancestry is that there are so many different ancestries which make up the American landscape that it’s difficult to get a handle on all of them at once, as well as their relative prevalence. When I approach the end of this project, I do hope to put together a single map showing multiple ancestral/ethnic groupings at once — but I’m running into technical difficulties, and it remains a challenging work in progress. Cross your fingers for me!

Here’s a link to my Tableau on Polish-Americans, so you can drill down, zoom in, etc:

https://public.tableausoftware.com/profile/jared5561#!/vizhome/supercensus/Polish