Visualizing Global Marathon 2012 - Challenge 3  The U.S.
Presidential Election in Social Media  Nearly all our
communication and activity online leaves traces or “data
exhaust,” which can be turned into data. Everything from social
media and mobile usage to Internet browsing and shopping offer
rich sources of information about the ways we live, think, and
relate to one another. Marketers are already mining this data to
sell products more effectively; it could also be used to gain
insights about our society.  The U.S. presidential election this
week was a major event for the United States, with important
ramifications for the rest of the world. As one would expect,
the election was widely discussed on social media around the
world. After the fact, this dialogue forms a data set describing
how we think and talk about the U.S. presidency and the
competing policy platforms at stake. Using the Twitter API, we
have gathered a large collection of tweets discussing the
election and the candidates from before and afte