UPDATE: I just put this data into google maps here.
Disclaimer: Wordles are often more artistic than informative but I thought it might fun to visualize the voice of the people.
A lot to write about from Government 2.0 camp but I am a bit under the weather and wanted to relax a little tonight. So I created wordles of the top 100 questions to President Obama from each category of the Open for Questions application on Whitehouse.gov . I also appointed myself the moderator and ruled that marijuana is a legitimate health reform issue but not a budget, financial stability, green jobs and energy or jobs issue. The off topic questions were removed from the top 100 in those categories. However if you want to see the complete raw data in Wordles, it is available here.
Phase net from IBMs Many eyes. Top 78 words and their relations from all categories. (Top 100 from each after moderation).
Word Tree All Categories starting with Mr. President
The full wordles below are on Wordle.net. Click on the thumbnail to see the full wordle:
Top 100 from all questions combined:
Ken Fischer is Chief Innovation Officer for ClickforHelp.com and thinks about social media, economics, linked data and Government 2.0. Let himknow if you want your web presence to be made more interactive and relevant.
Interesting representation of what is of concern to many Americans. One question: Why moderate the public’s input–did the White House ask that questions be limited questions on the budget, financial stability, green jobs and energy and jobs issue?
The reason I decided to moderate, as almost all successful forums/knowledge aggregators such as wikipedia do, is simply I felt there was too many off topic questions in some categories. I wanted to attempt to create some simple aggregation of what Americans were thinking on these various topics. And no I was not asked by anyone to moderate, post or anything else. There was just nothing on TV Saturday night and I didn’t feel like doing real work. Thanks for the comment.
Interesting data, Ken. I understand legalizing marijuana was perhaps the number one economic recovery question so I’m glad you removed those off topic questions.
Well I left it in under health which I think it has a legitimate place. I just was interested in what people were saying related to the topic of each category.
I love it. Wordles are my favorite play-yet not entirely play – thing, and I think this is a cool little demo of how govt mashups can be interesting and potentially quite useful.