Visualizing the Blackout Tuesday Phenomenon

Inspired by how posts of black squares “blacked out” Instagram feeds on June 2, 2020, I wrote Python scripts to gather and process posts tagged with #BlackoutTuesday that were created by the Instagram users I was following as of August 2020. Then I developed two visualizations with the data I gathered, one meant as a poetic “replay” of the phenomenon and the other used to examine the connections between the users who took part in the collective action.

You can view the visualizations at this link: https://jasmineyshih.github.io/BlackOutTuesdayProject/. The visualizations are currently still being developed and improved and might not yet display well on certain screen dimensions.

Project Demo