As reported on their news analytics blog and in The Huffington Post, Recorded Future recently decided to use data visualization to analyze and identify the strength of geopolitical relationships among countries. They used a unique set of data extracted using their News Analytics API — 7,000 trips to foreign countries by 1,000 prominent politicians, generals and business people. To visualize and analyze the data, they turned to Tibco Spotfire.
Recorded Future first plots the data to see a map emerge at a high level. In this visualization, they are able to highlight a specific city on the overall map.
The group next drilled deeper into the data using a connectedness metric to isolate and visualize the five most connected cities. Their findings show the most important cities to be emerging powers such as China, India and Turkey. The strongest connection of all is between Washington, D.C. and Beijing.
Recorded Future also analyzed the data by individuals and supplemented the city map with a treemap of individuals colored by how favorable the visit was considered by the media.
Incidentally, Spotfire’s Venkat Mullur, Senior Director of Industry Solutions, co-hosted a webcast with Recorded Future last month entitled: News Clues: How Web Content Can Help You Predict and Test the Impact of Events.
