The digital humanities project I chose to explore was The Rhythm of Food. Created in collaboration between Google News Lab and Truth & Beauty, the project is focused on identifying patterns between food seasonality and Google Trends data taken over the last 15 years. I was drawn to this site due to its user-friendly layout and visually appealing graphics.
Sources
The Rhythm of Food was created using data from Google Trends to investigate search query patterns. The data focused on the United States and Google Knowledge Graph topics distinguished food items from similar searches. The Food Database (FooDB) provided data on names, groups, and subgroups of food.
Processes
According to Truth & Beauty, The Rhythm of Food was built using d3 v4, Material UI, react, webpack, and ES2015. The color scale used to differentiate the year was made by viridis.
Presentation
The presentation of the Rhythm of Food is very dynamic with data visualization done through year clocks. The year clocks display Google Knowledge Graph data over 15 years with each month charted. The radius equals the number of Google searches, the colors represent the year, and the peaks show popularity.
In-Class Discussion
Does the site make an argument? If so, what?
Yes, this site is making the argument that Google search interest can explain food trends over the past 15 years. Through Google searches, interest in certain foods changes throughout the year, with patterns correlating to seasons and trends. For example, pumpkin spice lattes have the most searches during the fall season.
Who is the target audience? (i.e. specialists? a broader public?)
It appears that this project was created with the broader public in mind. It is accessible for anyone to understand, with detailed explanations of each aspect. Anyone interested in food, marketing, or health could find this project useful. I can also imagine this information being helpful for businesses such as grocery stores and coffee shops. By looking at the monthly and seasonal trends, stores can assume what consumers will be purchasing.
My Questions
As I explored The Rhythm of Food, many questions arose concerning the accuracy of this project. Since there is no access to the actual raw numbers of the trends, there is no way to get a sense of the total searches used. Additionally, Truth & Beauty is not an academic source but an independent data visualization company. How can we confirm that the trends highlighted in the project are accurate representations of food seasonality and how are mistakes made by the Google Knowledge Graph detected and removed from the data?
