The document summarizes a visualization tool called CarrinaCongress that allows users to compare members of the US Congress. It displays information on members' Twitter behavior, word usage, absences from votes, and tenure over time in an easy-to-compare, visual interface. The goal is to simplify complex legislative data and provide transparency about how members present themselves and behave on social media in a single consolidated source.

1. CarrinaCongress: Information
Visualization Techniques to Compare
Online Identities of the Members of
Congress
Athir Mahmud
PhD Candidate
Technical Communication
Chicago Colloquium for Digital Humanities and Computer Science
University of Chicago
November 2015

2. About Me
• Background: CS, HCI, Psychology, & Art
• Research: Information visualization of identity
presentation

3. CarrinaCongress: Information
Visualization Interface
• Designed to allow users to compare members
of Congress
• Accessible, visual, easy-to-compare
• Infographic-like look and feel
• Colors based on political party (mostly)
• “Carrina” means “comparison” in Arabic

4. The Problem
• People want better information about
members and candidates
• Twitter includes a lot of “noise”
• Currently, there is no single, consolidated
source of information about Congress
• No method to visually compare members at
the same time

5. Multiple Tools To Get Info About
Congress
• Government tools: senate.gov, house.gov,
congress.gov
• CrowdSource tools: Govtrack.us for roll calls
• Twitter tools:
https://twitter.com/CASMLab/lists/u-s-house-
of-reps-113th
• Non-profit transparency: OpenCongress.org
• Future home of these:
www.followyourleaders.org

6. CarrinaCongress Design Goals
• Simplify data that is difficult to understand
• Provide multiple forms of data to offer a “big
picture”
• Leverage existing and social media data to
create dashboards of information
• Easy to compare any two candidates
• Ensure access to this information nearly
instantaneous

8. Profiles & Tweet Behavior
Hemphill, Otterbacher, & Shapiro (2013)

10. Word (Tag Clouds)

12. CarrinaCongress – Tweet Frequency

14. CarrinaCongress:
Timeline of Tenure in Congress
Source: Congress.gov

16. CarrinaCongress: Absences For Votes
Source: GovTrack.us

18. Compare Two Members, Same Party?

19. Same Party Comparison (Republican)

20. CarrinaCongress End Goals
• Visually compare members of U.S. Congress
• Give users insight into how Congress behaves
on Twitter
• Offer users opportunity to learn about
members’ identity presentation
• Allow them to view multiple types of
information not found on Twitter

21. Contact and Connect
CarrinaCongress application coming soon:
– www.followyourleaders.org
– www.carrinacongress.com (coming soon)
Email: athir@hawk.iit.edu
Tweet: @AthirMahmud
Blog: www.athir.com