Going deeper in the analysis of our super actor, we have figured out to make a visualization able to show the imaginary related to Uber in the 26 countries cited in protocol [3.2]. The source used is Google Images. The purpose is to verify the presence of violent protests and to compare this information with Uber’s local legal status.
The protocol adopted is quite similar to the previous one, unlike here we were interested in the most displayed images on Google. So, thanks to “isearchfrom.com”, we were able to navigate Google Images simulating to be in our 26 countries and using as query “Uber + country’s name in in the local language/alphabet”. Considering that an average Google Images page contains more than 15 pictures and less than 25, we stated to download the top 20 images displayed for each country, getting a final database of 520 images. We kept them in the same order as they appeared on Images. The images were downloaded thanks to the tool Down them all.
Finally, images were tagged as representing protest, police, Uber/taxi, only taxi, infographics, drivers, people and cars, only cars, the app, advertising or other stuff. All the images were also grouped according to the level of protest: promotional (no protest), low, medium or high level.
In this visualization, the user can select one of the 26 countries given and see the images displayed on Google Images, using the previously explained query, in the date we made the exploration. A graph, related to the country selected, appears on the right. The bar plot on the bottom shows the amount of images tagged according to their level of protest represented. The scatter plot above, on the other hand, has colors associated to the bar plot and circles’ size related to the number of images present in that kind of tag.
Which are the countries with the highest level of violent protest is the most evident finding obtained through this visualization. In particular, in France and in Spain, the imaginary related to Uber is also much related to street demonstrations. In many other countries, we have a calmer imaginary, with graphic or photographic images linked to the Uber-taxi controversy, like Belgium, Croatia and Romania.
