Fig. 1 - Edgar Allan Poe's Wikipedia pages have been viewed globally almost 34 million times - in 99 languages. |
Pantheon is a “Big Data” project from the MIT Media Lab that will convince non-profits to visualize Wikipedia as a digital front door that can advance public
mission. What strategies can help the local nonprofit greet the global digital public?
As an example, I will show how I used Pantheon as part of a recent March 2014 presentation on “Pioneering a
Public Mission” to the trustees at the Providence Athenaeum, a thriving historic member-supported library in Providence, Rhode Island. My goal as a consulting
research historian at Austin Alchemy is to research, identify, and then target transformative
opportunities for new stories and strategies. Pantheon is still new to many audiences, and the results can
trigger important new kinds of conversations. In this case, about public
mission and new digital front doors.
Fig. 2 - The Providence Athenaeum in Providence, RI (USA). Interior view to the historic front door of the 1836 building at 251 Benefit St. |
How can Pantheon
contribute to thinking about a non-profit’s public mission, both in the past and looking to the future? Why does Wikipedia matter?
The technology folks at the MIT Media Lab wanted to answer the question: "Who are globally known people" across time and space? Harnessing the impressive computing capabilities available to the MIT Media Lab, the Pantheon database offers one answer to this question by visualizing the hierarchy of Wikipedia
page hits in multiple languages since 2008.
Thus, Pantheon is a market research tool for exploration and comparative analytics. Setting aside the method's limits (discussed on their website), Pantheon can be used to make quite unexpected big-picture discoveries directly relevant to a local situation, as I show here.
How could this kind of research help the Providence Athenaeum? Communicating the historic public mission of this non-profit community cultural center has always been a priority for the Providence Athenaeum’s dynamic Director of Programming. For almost a decade, Christina Bevilacqua has curated a full slate of free public programming, and her Salon series is widely acclaimed for its broad regional impact as a cultural “amplifier”. However, people still question the public mission of a privately supported non-profit. What are new ways to talk about this?
While exploring the Pantheon
home page, I searched for people born in the United States in the nineteenth
century. I confess I was shocked to discover that Edgar Allen Poe was ranked #1.
Fig. 3 - Adjusting the parameters to people born in the USA 1800-1900, the surprise finding from the Pantheon database is Edgar Allan Poe at #1 with almost 34 million page views since 2008. |
There are many many other interesting observations to make, but for now I want to look at the Pantheon data on Edgar Allan Poe, shown in Fig. 1 above. Since 2008 Edgar Allan Poe’s Wikipedia page
has been visited almost 34 million times in almost 100 different languages, including over seventeen million non-English page views.
Clearly, this global interest in Poe represents a new public for the Providence Athenaeum's own noteworthy Poe legacy. Here, in 1848, among the stacks of the Providence Athenaeum, Poe courted the poetess Sarah Helen Whitman, to whom he was briefly engaged. Whitman went on to become an important advocate for Poe's genius after his early death in 1849. This included her own global correspondence with the French poet Stephen Mallarme, who translated Poe's The Raven in 1875, with ravishing black and white illustrations by the painter Edouard Manet.
What does Poe's Wikipedia page say about the Providence Athenaeum story?
Nothing.
What about the Providence Athenaeum's own Wikipedia homepage?
Nothing.
How to reach tens of millions of people globally in 100 different languages?
With one line and hyperlinks, the Athenaeum could join the
Poe story on (free) Wikipedia.
Fig. 5 - The Poe Wikipedia page links to Sarah Helen Whitman but not to the Providence Athenaeum. |
Fig. 6 - Pantheon proves Wikipedia is a digital front door reaching millions globally. |
The Providence Athenaeum is fortunate to have an existing
historic Poe story ready to be developed in some way for some sort of new
global digital opportunity. This in itself is an important conversation that will likely be had by the Providence Athenaeum Trustees and stakeholders. But what about other rapid market research results that might be gleaned from the Pantheon database? Especially as an aid to thinking about “public mission” boundaries and opportunities?
Here are two examples.
I was reassured to see that Martin Luther
King tops this hierarchy of globally known Americans, and surprised to find Poe
still making the cut at #5. The rest of
the top ten heavily tilts heavily towards entertainment. Poe and Andy Warhol
suggest the power of bridging publics for high and popular culture. How can overlaps
be discovered, explored and innovatively redefined to make new audience
connections?
1) Pantheon can bring
a reality check to discussions about audience and demonstrate unspoken
assumptions about who is meant by “the
public”.
For example, Pantheon
can give shape to the overlapping contours between the humanities and
entertainment. What happens if I change the historical parameter from “born USA
1800-1900” to “born USA 1800-2010”?
Fig. 7 Globally known Americans 1800-2010 |
2) Would Pantheon’s
domain subcategory of Arts and/or Humanities bring me a more aligned
user-group?
Certainly Pantheon’s
domain subgroupings are idiosyncratic. In the end, I explored “Writers” as a
domain subcategory grouped under the Humanities,
and separate from the broad and eclectic domain grouping for Arts.
Who
are the most viewed 19th c. American writers? What new news could Pantheon provide?
Fig. 8 - Pantheon hierarchy of 19th c. American writers |
Returning to Fig. 8 and the question “Who are the most viewed 19th c. American writers?” I was astonished to see the local Providence, RI cult writer H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) ranked #6, above both Thoreau and Emerson.
Fig. 9 - The author H.P. Lovecraft, c. 1915 |
Continued at AustinAlchemy.com post:
“Glocal” Place Making & the Digital Front Door
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