Map of the Week 10-31-2011: Zombie Map

Happy Hallowe'en!

           “How do you combine an obsession with Zombie movies and data analysis of Google Maps?

Simple, you produce the map, above.  It was created by Oxford University's Internet Institute - and the guys behind the fantastic dataviz site, Floating sheep: Mark Graham, Taylor Shelton, Matthew Zook and Monica Stephens.

Using a keyword search for "zombies", it visualizes the absolute concentrations of references within the Google Maps database.

It shows how Africa, where the word 'zombie' originally came from, misses out on those criteria.

Graham, whose favourite Zombie movie is the original Romero Dawn of the Dead (‘the classic of the genre’) says of the map:

The results either provide a rough proxy for the amount of English-language content indexed over our planet, or offer an early warning into the geographies of the impending zombie apocalypse.”  From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/sep/23/zombie-map-world

Text written on the map itself:

“Using a keyword search for “zombies” the following map visualizes the absolute concentrations of references within the Google Maps database.  The map reveals two important spatial patterns.  First, much of the world lacks any content mentioning “zombies” whatsoever.  Second, and related, the highest concentrations of zombies in the Geoweb are located in the Anglophone world, especially in large cities.  The results either provide a rough proxy for the amount of English-language content indexed over our planet, or offer an early warning into the geographies of the impending zombie apocalypse. 

Visualization by Mark Graham, Taylor Shelton, Matthew Zook, and Monica Stephens.  This map and other visualizations can be found on the OII visualization website (Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, UK) at www.oii.xx.ac.uk/vis" Check out the website for more interesting visualizations.