Emily Clark
Theodore Dounias
Kristina Kutateli
The purpose of this investigation, proposed to us by ReThink Media, is to determine "whether there is a correlation between the amount of anti-Muslim rhetoric in the mainstream media and the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes.” Although the initial hypothesis that there is a positive correlation between anti-Muslim rhetoric and anti-Muslim hate crimes is relatively straightforward, it is not necessarily so; there are a multitude of other variables possibly correlated to this model, and we will need to create some systematized way of measuring them, and adapting our model. The bulk of the project, however, will be tidying and compiling datasets. ReThink Media will provide data about anti-Muslim rhetoric in news media, but data regarding anti-Muslim hate crimes proves to be more difficult to procure. The FBI Hate Crime Statistics dataset is the most reliable measurement, although because participation is voluntary the data set is incomplete. It is our group’s task to clean this dataset or supplement it with information from other sources. After that, we will create a series of models and visualizations, through which we wish to statistically establish convey our findings. All the work in this repo and on this project in general should be considered a small part in the general project by ReThink media, to be published in the coming months. We would consider our project successfull if we can use the data handed to us in a meaningful way, to either create interesting, easy to understand visualizations, or to make formal models which we will be presenting in the coming weeks.
Timeline
4/7 - import FBI files
4/14 -Wrangle FBI files (remove blank cells or fill in gaps with other sources, tidy)
-Import ReThink Media’s files (must fully understand NDA, tidy and make sure are compatible with wrangled FBI files)
4/21 - Visualization and testing correlations (Andrew and Chester will be able to help us)
4/28 - Data presentation and create poster