CNN International unveils ‘Ecosphere’ of tweets for COP17

CNN International, one of the world’s largest news organisations has released an interactive visualisation tracking Twitter traffic around the 17th UN World Climate Summit, being held in South Africa.

The visualisation takes the shape of a manipulatable globe, and features trees sprouting from it, each representing a different point of discussion at the conference being tweeted on.

The so called “Ecosphere” will also be projected in the form of a hologram at the actual conference, giving delegates an insight “in real time to what the global Twitter community think about the themes being discussed at the summit”.

According to CNN International:

The ECOSPHERE filters and aggregates tweets on the themes of the World Climate Summit using the hashtag #COP17. The tweets generate digital trees in real time. The more often a topic appears on Twitter with the hashtag #COP17, the faster the visualisation grows — from a small shoot to a large a tree. When topics are no longer discussed, the plant, or tree will die, creating room for new discussions. Zooming in on the various twigs and branches will illustrate what topics are of particular interest to participants worldwide.

The global news giant says that the initiative was conceived and put together by a number of international partners, including German marketing agency Heimat-Berlin, production studio Minivegas, and digital agency Stinkdigital.