A map of Team GWS on Facebook

This entry was posted by Laura on Tuesday, 13 July, 2010 at

I love visualizing data.  It can make things so much easier to understand.  If you haven’t heard, there is going to be a new AFL team called Greater Western Sydney or Team GWS.  There are a number of Facebook fanpages and groups dedicated to the team.  I went to www.facebook.com/teamgws, www.facebook.com/pages/Greater-Western-Sydney/110850405598090, www.facebook.com/pages/GO-Team-GWS/201507074991 and www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=211851956941.  I created a list of everyone who belonged to those fan pages and groups and the networks that those members were part of.  I then counted the total members of each networks, identified the geographic location of each network, added the total number of people from a city together… and yay! I got the pretty map below.



View full map

People who know Australian geography better than me: Are the fans in New South Wales from western Sydney?

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Category: Facebook, Team GWS
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  • Just dusting up: the locations that the Facebook site gives are fairly accurate, and what I would have considered "Western Sydney".

    However, I saw some dots in Eastern Sydney and Sutherland.

    Here is an article from a current Sydney (Swan) player:

    www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/anonymity...

    Looking at the map in its original size, I see lots of Adelaide; Melbourne; Albury (NSW)/Wodonga (VIC) fans.

    In Sydney itself, the westernmost location is probably Penrith. Kellyville seems to have big numbers, and so does Parramatta (7).

    (You used more than one Facebook fan group, didn't you?)

    There are also Malaysian and New Zealand supporters.

    I don't know that the Hills Shire was mentioned as such.

    What about Hawkesbury?

    Remember, GWS is 14 cities/councils/local government areas.

    I mainly remember the Blue Mountains and various tourist locations.

    And Keating (former Prime Minister) was a "Blaxland Blacktown" boy. :-).
  • I used several fan groups to find network membership. I would have removed duplicate members so as not to over represent an area... but there weren't any from this sample. (I could probably have added five if I had gotten a few more communities.)

    There are also a few Americans in there if I recall correctly. If those Americans did visited and went back home or if those are Americans who have are currently residing in Australia, I can't tell based on network membership alone.

    Those dots are the ones that you see. I can probably continue to try to improve that map by adding in a few more Facebook networks but I don't know if the distribution will improve. I did take that data and put it on the same map as the Twitter data for the official Team GWS Twitter account and ACT4GWS account. It is available at bit.ly/d7CLPr . The patterns are much different to a degree because all the Melbourne based footy clubs and newspapers, etc. are following Team GWS.
  • At the time I saw the original map, only the red dots (Twitter) were there.

    Now there are blue (Facebook) dots.

    Non-duplicate groups make it so much easier!

    "If those Americans did visited and went back home or if those are Americans who have are currently residing in Australia, I can't tell based on network membership alone."

    I would be interested in finding out more about this population.
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