Page 72 - GIS for Science Technology Showcases

PEOPLE FOR THE PEOPLE A new way to engage with politics
Whitney Kotlewski and Raynah Kamau, Esri
People for the People (P4TP) is a GIS community focused on educating and empowering individuals to engage with civic issues. The P4TP team is made up of volunteers from diverse backgrounds, ethnicities, thought processes, and even political party affiliations. This collective of about 150 individuals answered a call to action led by Black Girls M.A.P.P., which connects and empowers women of color in the field of GIS, and came together to provide information that would impact voters in the 2020 election and the broader GIS community.
Leading up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election, P4TP used GIS to reimagine how we engage with politics and politicians by breaking down the complexities of politics into digestible maps, apps, and stories that live on after the 2020 election. P4TP created geospatial solutions to recenter and focus political issues on people— our friends, family, and neighbors—while elevating untapped communities.
Among the deliverables P4TP made were 34 web maps, 19 stories created with ArcGIS StoryMaps, 8 apps created with ArcGIS® Dashboards and ArcGIS® Web AppBuilder, 13 pages created using ArcGIS® HubSM, and 7 apps created with ArcGIS Experience Builder application.
When identifying how communities can use GIS as an analytical tool, the team explored ways to analyze sentiment data and created two exemplary products to visualize sentiments related to social and political activity during the election.
Sentiment mapping
The sentiment mapping application by P4TP brings together ArcGIS® API for JavaScriptTM, ArcGIS® Survey123, and the Experience Builder to help crowdsource public feelings on sensitive social issues. The apps showcase a quantitative analysis of public feelings via a word cloud and provide additional context to explain those feelings in the map’s pop-ups. Through charting, the app highlights the distribution of race to provide additional insight into the positioning of those responses. The responses are grouped to emphasize shared sentiments about social issues across the nation.
“Educating and empowering people to engage with civic issues”
—People4thepeople.org
Sentiment analysis
In another example of visualizing sentiment data, P4TP used Twitter's API, ArcGIS Dashboards, and Python to help people stay current on the tweets of candidates in their area. This capability is important in the political landscape because many representatives use social media—Twitter especially—as a way to connect with and relate to their (potential) constituencies. In turn, these social media posts can give community members a more personal view of a candidate's priorities and affiliations that are not immediately apparent on a campaign website.
The Twitter sentiment application allows users to answer questions such as "Which district in my state represents the majority of Twitter activity?" or "Which party seems to dedicate more time to broadcasting their opinion on Twitter?” From there, community members can explore how a specific district, party, or candidate has appeared on Twitter during the past week.
Leading by example
P4TP approached its work with the intention to empower others. The team remained steadfast for two months, building information products with hopes of empowering communities through GIS. Their work modeled what unity looks like when people work together, appreciate their differences, and get involved for positive change.
The U.S. Congress Bill Tracker app helps users monitor mulitple news stories by location about legislation and political activities, such as protests.
206 GIS for Science