This Source Map is also an experiment to try to remedy a problem in traditional journalism. In print and broadcast, journalists often juxtapose sources with opposing viewpoints. This storytelling method makes it look like people are in conflict. But in reality, relationships are filled with nuance, and it is rare for two people to have absolute opposing views. This journalistic method of creating conflict can distort the audience's perception of important issues and interfere with the ability for newsmakers to compromise.
This Source Map tries to display journalistic information in a way that doesn't give any person's viewpoint an advantage over anyone else's. It also shows how groups that are often framed in the news as opponents are actually in close contact. And unlike a traditional journalistic story, this Source Map allows users to self-discover relationships and draw conclusions on their own.
In September 2005, Emerson College Journalism Professor Paul Niwa and Sampan Newspaper Editor Adam Smith agreed to cooperate on a visual directory of the neighborhood. The information for the directory was gathered by the JR600B Writing News Across the Media graduate journalism class at Emerson College.
Throughout the Fall Semester, 16 graduate students met local leaders and toured the neighborhood. In December 2006, the class identified 16 neighborhood stakeholders. The stakeholders included politicians, organization leaders and prominent business people. The students used the "snowball" approach to collect data. The students asked the stakeholders who they discussed community news with, and then tracked down those sources and repeated the process until each student had talked to at least eight people. The students also photographed and wrote short biographical profiles of the people they contacted.
The information was placed into a MySQL database, using Six Apart's blogware Movable Type as a user interface to enter the data. The photographs were optimized and resized for the web using Adobe's Fireworks. Movable Type also was used as a Content Management System for rendering the database content as web pages.
One hundred thirty-seven people were named in the database. Most of them were contacted and profiled. Analytic Technologies' Netdraw was selected to graph the connections between people. But, first the SQL database was converted to an Excel spreadsheet. The Excel spreadsheet was then translated into a "binary matrix." And the binary matrix was pasted into Analytic Technologies' Ucinet to create a network database file.
Netdraw rendered the network database using the "Spring Embedded" method. The graph was saved as a Windows Metadata file and imported into Adobe Flash to create the user interface.
The Source Map project was conceived and directed by Paul Niwa, an Assistant Professor at Emerson College's Journalism Department. Andrew "Mac" Slocum, an Adjunct Professor at Emerson College created the Movable Type interface and the SQL database design. Emerson College Assistant Professor of Journalism Leon Wynter instructed the class on print writing. And the data was collected and written by the JR600B Fall 2005 class - Ned Brown, Nick Cifuentes, Michele Costa, Susan Fitton, Melinda Green, Leanne Henschke, Victoria Hutcheson, Brendan Lynch, Chris Sardelli, Melina Schuler, Jessica Stanley, Andrea Stewart, Brian Szczerbinski and Sarah Waskiewicz.