Weekly Wordcloud Experiment: State, One, Going…

I’m continuously looking at ways to keep this blog fresh and to keep motivated to write for it. My track record is not particularly good.

So, here’s an idea I had. I love wordclouds, I also enjoy keeping up with the #EnvHist Daily that I curate. The daily collection of links is made up what is popular under the #envhist hashtag, its adjacent hashtags (such as #climhist and #mininghistory), and what is shared by members of the the Environmental History/Humanities twitter list that I created.

Thus, I decided I’d keep track of the top stories for a week and then make a wordcloud out of their contents to see if any patterns are distinguishable. The results are…interesting and pretty to look at…I’m not sure if they mean anything though, or if this is a useful exercise. But really, does everything have to be useful?

Here are the top articles amongst environmental historians and humanities scholars this past week (February 27-March 5, 2017):

Monday: “Canadian History Roundup – Week of February 19, 2017″ by Andrea Eidinger, Unwritten Histories

Tuesday: “China coal consumption falls for third year running” by Zachary Davies Boren, Energy Desk, Greenpeace

Wednesday: “The State of Trump’s State Department” by Julia Ioffe, The Atlantic

Thursday: “Chevron is first oil major to warn investors of risks from climate change lawsuits” by Joe Romm, ThinkProgress

Friday: “It’s not all lightbulbs” by W. Patrick McCray, Aeon

Saturday: “White House proposes steep budget cut to leading climate science agency” by Steven Mufson, Jason Samenow and Brady Dennis, Washington Post

Sunday: “MAYHEM IN PHILLY: AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE EPIC SENATORS-FLYERS BRAWL” by Mike Commito, Vice Sports

Top Words:

1.State
2. one
3. going
4. game
5. Canada
6. Department
7. first
8. new
9. also
10. history
11. like
12. week