A Spatial Exploration of Music Consumption Through the Lens of Socio-Political Power

Data Science For All / Women (DS4A/Women) is a free, merit-based program with a <5% admission rate, designed to help women improve data skills, connect with industry mentors, and join a diverse and skilled professional network.

In the summer of 2022, as a Data Science Fellow with the DS4A/Women program, I worked with a team of five brilliant women to map Spotify music consumption through the lens of geopolitical power, a project that was ultimately selected as one of five top projects in our cohort. My individual contributions to the project included data wrangling, socio-economic analysis and modeling, data visualization, and presenting the team’s findings.

Data visualization examples

The primary variable of interest in this analysis was the number of songs from each country that entered the top 100 charts of another country. This provides insight into countries with large influence in the international market, and helps to identify key music exporters.

To begin this analysis, the team looked at the proportion of each country’s chart-topping songs that came from artists originating in that country. We found large differences between the 33 countries included in the dataset. In this analysis, “domestic music consumption” refers to music produced by artists originating in the origin of the Top 100 chart. “International music consumption” refers to to music produced by artists originating from any country other than the origin of the Top 100 chart.

• In the US, 80% of the music that makes it to the Top 100 charts on Spotify comes from domestic artists. France, Italy, Germany, and Brazil also heavily favored local music.

• On the other end of the spectrum, less than 1% of the top 100 charts in Costa Rica were from local artists. 

• On Average, 29% of the chart toppers in these countries came from domestic artists

A key component of our analysis was assessing the relationship between a country’s economic power (here measured in per capita GDP) and musical influence, which can be interpreted as an indicator of soft power.

Mapping GDP per capita against chart toppers per capita, we see a general positive correlation with a few notable outliers. 

• Puerto Rico - Low GDP per capita and a high number of chart-toppers per capita

• Norway - High GDP per capita, paired with a high number of chart-toppers per capita

• Monaco - High GDP per capita, but a low number of chart-toppers per capita

• United States - The US is less influential than expected when the number of chart-topping songs is adjusted for population size. By the raw number of chart-topping songs, the US is the most influential by a large margin.

Looking at the distribution of chart-topping songs by the artist’s country of origin, we see notable differences depending on whether we are looking at the raw number of songs that make the charts internationally, or whether we look at the number of songs per capita. When looking at the raw number of songs, the US tops the charts by a large margin, with by far the most number of songs by US artists making the charts internationally, followed by populous Western European countries like the UK, Germany, and France.

However, when adjusting for population size, a different trend emerges. Puerto Rico has an outsized influence on the international charts by population size, with over 1,600 chart-toppers per million residents, more than doubling Norway’s influence, with about 600 chart toppers per 1m population. This group of influencers per capita heavily features Latin American and Northern European countries.

United Nations Migration (IOM) - Lake Chad Basin Stability Index Report

In order to help find durable solutions for internal displacement — whether through return to communities of origin, local integration, or relocation – and to prevent new displacements in the region, it is critical to understand the relative levels of stability in locations hosting returnees or displaced populations. IOM launched the Stability Index (SI) in 2019 to evaluate the stability of areas hosting returnees or displaced populations in the LCB. The SI seeks to understand which factors influence a location's stability in order to identify priority interventions for transition and recovery, with the goal of strengthening the resilience and stability in this conflict and displacement-affected region. In practical terms, the Stability Index measures perceptions of stability and analyzes which factors have relatively larger impact on the decisions of populations to remain in place or to move. The tool can serve as a measure of stability in targeted areas in the LCB to enable governmental authorities and partners to develop better strategies, and to prioritize and plan resources in fragile, unstable areas for coherent and comprehensive interventions that link humanitarian, recovery, and stabilization approaches.  This report presents results from November 2021 - February 2022 Stability Index Round 2 of data collection conducted in Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria and Niger.

From 4-Chan to the Capitol: A Text-As-Data Analysis of Q-Anon Posts

The far-right QAnon conspiracy made national headlines as Trump supporters—including many self-professed QAnon believers—stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Although the Capitol siege thrust QAnon into the national spotlight, the conspiracy theory has been linked with numerous violent attacks since the first “Q drop” in 2017, including murder, bomb threats, kidnapping, and attacks on public infrastructure. In May 2019, over a year before the Capitol attacks, an FBI bulletin described the growing threat of “fringe conspiracy theory” driven “domestic extremists,” specifically citing QAnon as a group of concern. This bulletin highlighted that “certain conspiracy theory narratives tacitly support or legitimize violent action,” motivating their adherents to commit violent acts. This text analysis project aims to better understand QAnon narratives, particularly the way that those narratives have changed over time as QAnon was pushed to increasingly fringe platforms.

Background

The Origins of QAnon

The first widely recognized “Q drop,” or QAnon post, appeared on 4chan’s /pol/ message board in October 2017, with an anonymous post claiming that Hillary Clinton would be arrested the following Monday. The poster, “Q Clearance Patriot,” claimed to be a high-level government agent with top-secret “Q-level” security clearance. QAnon quickly gained a dedicated following, and by 2018 was named one of the “25 Most Influential People on the Internet” by Time Magazine. Part of the allure and popularity of QAnon has been attributed to its participatory nature, which resembles a popular genre of alternate reality games. As the Financial Times explains,

The movement is gaining ground partly because its modus operandi — followers deconstruct cryptic clues from a government “insider” to uncover the hideous plot — emulates the addictive qualities of a Larp.

While Larps have existed on forums like 4chan for years, QAnon fans reflect an older demographic than traditional 4chan posters and may be less critical of information they come across on these image boards than the younger generation of internet natives.

After a few months on 4chan, Q announced that the platform had been “infiltrated” and moved to the 8chan board /cbts/, which stands for “calm before the storm,” owned by a South African man named Paul Ferber. 8chan founder Fredrick Brennan claims that while Furber was likely “the original Q,” Jim Watkins, who purchased 8chan from Brennan, eventually took control of the Q account around January 2018. Swiss company Orph Analytics confirms that QAnon dposts appear to have two distinct authors, based on stylometry analysis of all 4,953 Q drops: their analysis suggests that the account changed hands when Q began posting on 8chan in December 2017. In mid-2019, 8chan was forced offline after links to the Christchurch shooting in New Zealand and synagogue shooting in California were revealed. After several months of inactivity, Q moved to 8kun, where the account continued to make posts until December 2020. After Donald Trump lost his reelection bid in early November 2020, Q went abruptly quiet, posting only a few short drops before falling completely silent in December. In January, Watkins posted a message on Telegram that many have interpreted as a “resignation letter”:

We gave it our all. Now we need to keep our chins up and go back to our lives as best we are able… As we enter into the next administration please remember all the friends and happy memories we made together over the past few years.

-@CodeMonkeyZ

QAnon has published no new drops since Watkin’s January Telegram message.

2021 Reading Analysis

I always write down each book I read in a notes app as soon as I finish. There is something so satisfying about watching the list grow throughout the year. Plus, I am horrible with remembering the names of books so it’s a handy reference when I want to give friends book recommendations!

In 2021, I read 38 books — 33 fiction and 5 non-fiction. I used to read a more balanced mix but got on a real escapist kick around March 2020. 37 of the books I read were in English, and one was in French (Harry Potter, of course). Although I didn’t track reading time, Harry Potter et le Prisonnier D’Azkaban definitely took me much longer to read than any of the other books, but I’m proud that I stuck with it.

The charts below compare my ratings for the books I read in 2021 with their average Goodreads scores. Overall, I ranked these books slightly more favorably than the average Goodreads user (4.13 for me and 4.06 for Goodreads), but overall it was pretty close. However, the averages mask some notable disagreements between me and GoodReads. The Monster Baru Cormorant was my lowest-rated book for the year, but GoodReads users rated it at nearly a 4. On the other hand, I loved a book on the origins of the gang MS-13, but it was the lowest-ranked book, according to GoodReads, off of my 2021 list.

The diverging bar chart below highlights the titles where GoodReads users and I diverged the most. You can also find this interpretation on the scatter plot above, but I wanted to make it easier to pick out individual books and see where we disagreed. Besides the books I highlighted earlier, I was surprised to see the entire “cyberpunk techno-thriller” Centinal Cycle series by Malka Older was one of my biggest disagreements with GoodReads users (granted, I did give all the books a score of 5.) Whatever GoodReads, I still recommend the series!

Mapping the Dynamics of Humanitarian Assistance in Mexico

Excerpts from SIPA capstone workshop produced for Doctors Without Borders (MSF). All text excerpts in this post and all data visualizations in the report were produced by Liz Olson. The full report can be downloaded here.

Migration Trends & Policy Landscape

Over the last 10 years, the U.S. and Mexican governments have enacted increasingly restrictive policies attempting to reduce migration and limit asylum access. Despite militarization of the borders and expanded immigration enforcement, a growing number of migrants from northern countries of Central America have continued to travel towards the United States. Although Mexico passed promising migration reforms in 2011, the administration of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) changed course with the 2014 Southern Border Plan leading to a spike in Mexican deportations to Central America. After U.S. President Donald Trump (2017-2021) took office, both U.S. deportations and apprehensions at the Southwest border began to rise, likely reflecting an increase in both enforcement policy as well as the spike in migrants arriving from Central America in 2019. During the COVID-19 pandemic, detention and apprehension figures for both Mexico and the U.S. declined significantly from previous years. However, these figures are already on the rise again in the early months of the Biden Administration.

In March of 2018, when the first migrant caravan left Honduras en route to the U.S., the Trump Administration launched a battery of harmful policies aimed at deterring migration. Increasing numbers of migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. coincided with a jump in apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2019,5 reaching rates of over 850,000 — although these were still far below the historic record of 1.6 million apprehensions in 2000.6 The Trump Administration responded with sweeping changes to asylum procedures aimed at restricting access to the asylum system.7

Violence

“The route through Mexico is the cemetery of Central America and it is increasing. We have had cases of violence by state agents and organized crime.”

– Shelter Provider, U.S.-Mexico Border region

Violence along migratory routes

After fleeing violence in northern Central America, migrants continue to face violence along the migration route at the hands of organized crime, state agents, local communities, other migrants, and even the institutions that have theoretically been put in place to protect them. As Martinez et. al. wrote in 2019, “Crossing from southern to northern Mexico is considered one of the most dangerous routes in the world for undocumented migrants.”12

Violence along the route is so pervasive that it has become normalized for many migrants. As one direct service provider explained:

One thing that was shocking to me when I spoke to clients was how normalized violence is – particularly gender-based violence. Oftentimes, it won’t even come out in initial interviews, because clients don’t perceive it as noteworthy or worthy of disclosing because it’s so pervasive. It’s really been normalized for a lot of people.

– Direct Service Provider, United States

Violent Locations

SIPA survey findings indicate that service providers throughout Mexico perceived the three Northern routes to be the most dangerous for migrants – 70% indicated that the Northeast route along the Gulf of Mexico was among the most dangerous, followed by 40% selecting the Northwest and Northern routes as among the most dangerous (see figure “Most Dangerous Routes” and map “Most Dangerous Routes & States”). The presence of organized crime along much of the U.S. border creates much of this risk: as one service provider described, “The northern border four years ago, turned into a nightmare because the crossings were controlled by organized crime”. Interviewees noted that along the U.S. border, Tamaulipas was particularly dangerous, in addition to Piedras Negras, Ciudad Juárez, and Tijuana. In Central and Southern Mexico, the route between Mexico City through Hidalgo as well as the states of Veracruz, Chiapas, and Tabasco were highlighted by interviewees as notably dangerous for migrants.

Guatemala is also perceived as particularly unsafe. According to a survey of migrants conducted by the Mixed Migration Center (n = 323), 22% of respondents indicated that Guatemala was the most dangerous country for transit and 14% mentioned Mexico.13 While only a small share of respondents in the SIPA survey indicated that the Guatemalan routes were the most dangerous, these results were likely biased towards Mexican routes as the majority of SIPA survey respondents were based in Mexico. Certain areas along Guatemala’s northern border, particularly between Flores and El Ceibo in Petén, as well as Parque Nacional Laguna Del Tigre, are viewed as extremely dangerous and almost outside of state control given the power and prevalence of criminal groups.14

Sources of Violence

Cartels are a key source of violence along the migration route. 65% of respondents to the Mixed Migration Centre Survey considered criminal gangs to be the main perpetrators of violent incidents.13 It is not only migrants themselves that are targeted by organized crime – service providers also reported being targeted directly. Government agents are another notable source of violence against migrants, and reports of corruption and collaboration with organized crime are concerning. Approximately 25% of respondents in the Mixed Migration Centre Survey indicated that government officials are a primary perpetrator of violence.13

The massacre of 19 migrants in Tamaulipas in January 2021, for which a dozen Mexican police officers have been charged, is a gruesome example of the threat migrants face from law enforcement. As Michael Lettieri from the Center for United States-Mexican Studies told the New York Times, “Migrants experience violence not just because organized crime is involved in human smuggling but because the state is involved in organized crime.”15 Interviewees confirmed this “double burden” of violence, saying that migrants “encounter violence from criminal organizations and from state authorities.” If migrants make it to the U.S., they may suffer mistreatment at the hands of U.S. authorities and in U.S. detention centers, and they risk deportation back to dangerous conditions across the border in Mexico.

Types of Violence

Violence is directed at migrants in many forms: financial exploitation, physical brutalization, intimidation, humiliation, and institutional violence. The vast majority of respondents to the SIPA survey – about 75% – ranked financially motivated violence such as extortion and theft as the most common types of violence that migrants experience (see “Types of Violence”). Migrant bodies are exploited as a source of revenue, with several interview respondents highlighting that migrants have become “a commodity for organized crime.” Kidnapping, although perceived to be less common than extortion or theft, was nonetheless cited by 30% respondents as a common manifestation of violence. Cartels abduct migrants for both ransom and labor. As one shelter provider from the U.S.-Mexico border region explained, “the narco wants them as merchandise, they kidnap them to ask for money from the family,” as well as for “labor exploitation.”

It is important to note that SIPA survey results reflect the perceptions of service providers, rather than the experiences of migrants. Service providers may be unaware of all the types of violence that migrants face, as migrants are often fearful of reporting violence due to possible repercussions. According to one interviewee:

Women often don’t report being the victims of crime. They’re worried the very people who will be investigating the case might be somehow involved or somehow colluding with whoever hurt them. I think the main problem is people are too afraid to report crimes and when they do report crimes they’re not adjudicated and they probably don’t even reach the judicial level at all.

– Direct Service Provider, Central Mexico region

Interviewees also highlighted that women migrants, in general, may be less likely to discuss incidents of sexual abuse due in part to their processes of assimilation, the sensitive and traumatic nature of their experiences, and concern about how their abuse will be perceived. One interviewee asserted that this does not mean this violence is not happening and emphasized that the scale and frequency of sexual assault is much greater than official data reflects. This reporting gap is likely also reflected in the SIPA survey results.

Migrant Deaths in Mexico, Northern Central America, and the U.S. Border

This interactive map, created using IOM Missing Migrants data, demonstrates trends in migrant deaths en route from Central America to the United States border. This map demonstrates that the summer months of June and July are most deadly. The map highlights the deadliest areas of the journey, according to Missing Migrant reports. Specifically, there are a number of vehicle-related fatalities along the train tracks in southern Mexico, as well as along the western coast. Along the U.S. border, there are a large number of deaths due to exposure in Arizona, and deaths due to drowning along the Rio Grande in Texas. When interpreting this data, it is important to keep in mind the limitations of the Missing Migrants dataset, namely that migrant deaths not reported by the media or recorded by officials due to their remote location or other circumstances may be systematically excluded from the data.