911-data-vizThis week, Wikileaks published a large dataset of intercepted pager messages from the 9/11 World Trade Center tragedy including messages between individuals and emergency services.  Jeff Clark took the data and analyzed various phrases for important and shares the results.

The archive is a completely objective record of the defining moment of our time. We hope that its entrance into the historical record will lead to a nuanced understanding of how this event led to death, opportunism and war.

I have taken this data and done an analysis for 100 phrases selected to summarize the events of that horrible day. I have focused on the time period from 8am until 8pm, September 11th, 2001.

He has a sparkline chart showing various phrases over the 12 hour period, with some interested prominent selections like “please call home” and “call your mother” showing up above “plane crash”.  See a world-style animated visualization after the break.

via 9/11 Pager Data Visualization.

Pager Data from 9/11 – Phrase Cloud Visualization from Jeff Clark on Vimeo.