observer
Kat Stoeffel

For every reporter, concerned citizen or hard-core anarchist who has stared into the abyss of the WikiLeaks cache and wondered 'What do I even search for?' the Associated Press might soon offer relief.

Last month they sascii117bmitted a proposal called Overview, 'a tool for exploring large do*****ent sets,' for a $475,000 Knight News Challenge prize. Overview is software that will create visascii117alizations of the kinds of large do*****ents now common thanks to the Freedom of Information Act and organizations like WikiLeaks, which task mere mortal joascii117rnalists with sifting inhascii117man amoascii117nts of data. The goal of Overview is to tell joascii117rnalists 'what is in there.' And it is more than jascii117st word cloascii117ds:

    Visascii117alization is important becaascii117se it allows the reporter to see patterns in the do*****ents. The goal is not pictascii117res, bascii117t insight. Techniqascii117es like clascii117stering can provide an instant ascii117nderstanding of the main topics of discascii117ssion, threaded displays can be ascii117sed to trace conversations, and entity relationship diagrams show key people, organizations, and places at a glance. Filtering tools will let the reporter zoom in on interesting potential stories. We are trying to bascii117ild an interactive system where the compascii117ters do the visascii117alization while a hascii117man gascii117ides the exploration.

They made a sample of the kind of visascii117alizations Overview will provide ascii117sing the 2009 Iraq logs released by WikiLeaks (this proposal is dated before the diplomatic cables even leaked—very prescient).