1. Popcorn and Politics
New York Times Data Visualization
by Aaron Druck and Ramsey Nasser

2. Concepts
• Reveal how your money flows from a
movie ticket to a 2008 Political Candidate
• Connection between films and politicians
• Media bias
• Transparency
Popcorn & Politics: Concept

3. Popcorn & Politics: Research

4. The Story
Specifically a movie (producers)
Popcorn & Politics: Concept

5. Audience
• Consumers
• Voters
• Politicians
• Moviegoers
• Producers
Popcorn & Politics: Domains

6. Design Question
• Where does your money go when you buy a
movie ticket?
• Is the film industry left-leaning in
support?
• Is there a connection between the film
industry and political machine?
• Is Campaign Finance Reform effective?
Popcorn & Politics: Research

7. Precedents
• Napolean’s March
• CEO Politics
• Fundrace 2008
• TheyRule
• MovieCharts
Popcorn & Politics: Research

8. March of Napolean’s troops to
Moscow 1861
Popcorn & Politics: Research

9. CEO Politics
h"p://www.ceocampaigncontribu4ons.info/
Popcorn & Politics: Research

10. Fundrace 2008
http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/
Popcorn & Politics: Research

11. TheyRule
h"p://www.theyrule.net/
Popcorn & Politics: Research

12. MovieCharts
http://www.xach.com/moviecharts/2008.html
Popcorn & Politics: Research

13. Visualization Concepts
• Bars/lines
• Network
• Minimal/simple
• Clean
• Essentialist
Popcorn & Politics: Research

14. Edward Tufte
• More data, less data ink
• No legend
• No grid
• Chart junk
Popcorn & Politics: Research

15. Process
• Find relationship in data
• Build local database by pooling multiple
data sources
• Visualize the data
• Tell compelling, relevant story
Popcorn & Politics: Process

16. Process: The Data
Movies > Producers > Donations > Candidates
Popcorn & Politics: Process

17. Why Producers?
• "Producers seldom have a set salary,
because they get a percentage of a show's
earnings or ticket sales.”
- Dept of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics
Popcorn & Politics: Process

18. Database (XML)
• Movie (The Dark Knight)
– Producer (John Doe)
• Candidate (Barack Obama)
• Donation ($500)
– Producer (Jane Smith)
• Candidate (John McCain)
• Donation ($2300)
• http://api.popcornandpolitics.com/movies/
Hancock
Popcorn & Politics: Process

19. Technology
• SQLite - Database
• Ruby – Scraping scripts/backend/API
• Flex/MXML- v1.0
• Flash/AS3 – v2.0
Popcorn & Politics: Process

20. Prototype I
Popcorn & Politics: Process

21. Prototype 2
Popcorn & Politics: Process

22. Prototype 3
Popcorn & Politics: Process

23. Popcorn & Politics v1.0
Popcorn & Politics: Process

24. 2nd round of sketches
Popcorn & Politics: Process

25. Final Revisions
• Sankey Graphs
Popcorn & Politics: Process

26. Final Revisions
• Popcorn and Politics Sankey
Popcorn & Politics: Process

27. Final Revisions
• Crisp
• Minimal
• One-view
• Tufte
Popcorn & Politics: Process

28. Popcorn & Politics v2.0
• “Tortilla Heaven” > producer Gilbert Dumontet > $500 to Giuliani and $250 to Richardson
• “One Missed Call” > producer Broderick Johnson > $2300 to Obama
• “Rambo” > producer George Furla > $2300 to McCain
Popcorn & Politics: Process

29. Popcorn & Politics v2.1
Popcorn & Politics: Process

30. Conclusion
- Obama received a lot of donations.
- “I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry”
donated to McCain.
- Supreme Court ruling rejecting limits on
corporate spending on political campaigns

31. Next Steps
• P&P as a tool
• Possibly release Sankey library
• Optimize public API
• Create large PDF prints of graphs

32. Thank you!
http://www.popcornandpolitics.com
Ramsey Nasser
http://www.ramseynasser.com
Aaron Druck
http://a.parsons.edu/~druca992/blog/