The story of Ukraine's protests, which started out as a trickle of news last year, has quickly escalated into an international issue involving the United States and the United Nations.
Now a stunning new data visualization presented by Twitter shows exactly how broadly Ukraine's story spread across the planet during the month of February.
See also: Tensions Escalate as Putin Gets Permission to Deploy Military In Ukraine
Twitter's graphic (see below), which displays the tweet mentions of Ukraine from Feb. 1 to Feb. 25, was posted on Sunday on the @TwitterData account. The data visualization was facilitated by CartoDB, which provides a cloud-based map and analysis engine that allows companies to build their own data visualization apps.
ICYMI: Twitter Conversation about #Ukraine, February 2014 #dataviz
http://t.co/u1xwHuoxtT pic.twitter.com/T1Kgu9fL2F
— Twitter Data (@TwitterData) March 2, 2014
While the data animation, which cycles in a loop through the 25 days, is indeed fascinating, some will notice that the red pulsating graphics bear a disturbing similarity to explosions.
That aesthetic similarity to a map visual we might see in a film about world war is unsettling, but it doesn't diminish the growing importance of Twitter as a tool to take the virtual pulse of the world and its interests in real-time.
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