Britney Spears Heat Map
I came across an interesting curiosity. The State University of New York at Stony Brook has been tracking the amount of exposure various personalities are getting in the news on a geographic basis. The results for March 2005 are available in a series of “heat maps”. The more red in a given area of the country, the more news coverage that person received in that area.
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Bill Clinton Heat Map
Some of the results are predictable and some aren’t. It makes sense that former U.S. President Bill Clinton would get more coverage in the northeast since his wife Hillary is a Senator in New York. He also gets more coverage in his home state of Arkansas. But why is Britney Spears getting so much attention in the sparsely populated Rocky Mountain West? It is clear that Britney got a lot more coverage than Bill in the month this data was collected.
Bill Gates Heat Map
I would expect that bill Gates, head of Microsoft, would get a lot of news coverage in the state of Washington (home of Microsoft) and in financial and tech centers like New York and Silicon Valley, but why all the news about Bill in North and South Dakota?
You can ponder all of this and check out the heat maps for a long list of personalities. More information is here and you can look up the personality of your choice.