Nationality of Issues. Rights Types.

Team members

Vera Bekema, Liliana Bounegru, Andrea Fiore, Anne Helmond, Simon Marschall, Sabine Niederer, Bram Nijhof, Richard Rogers and Elena Tiis.

Research strategy

Employ Google to show the most prominent types of rights that are recognized or referred to per country.

Method

Query the term “rights” in the local languages in the local Google versions, e.g., “oigused” in Google.ee and “direitos” in Google.pt. Manually, read the results and make lists of the top ten distinctive rights types, leaving them in the order that Google provided.

Note the local Google versions were chosen on the basis of the language skills of the participants of the Digital Methods Summer School, 2009. Note too that when faced with a large quantity of Google versions for a single language, a further selection was made, e.g., the top three Spanish-speaking countries according to population.

For those local Google versions where multiple languages are spoken, the two dominant languages were queried. In certain cases we queried multiple languages in the same Google, i.e., Belgium (Flemish and French), Canada (English and French) and the United States (English and Spanish).

Local Google version, query, query date

Google.se with query “rattigheter” (13.07.09)

Google.fi with query “oikeudet” (13.07.09)

Google.ee with query “oigused” (15.07.09)

Google.lv with query “tiesibas” (16.07.09)

Google.co.uk with query “rights” (13.07.09)

Google.nl with query “rechten” (13.07.09)

Google.be with query “rechten van” (15.07.09)

Google.be with query “droits” (14.07.09)

Google.lu with query “rechte” (15.07.09)

Google.de with query “rechte” (15.07.09)

Google.at with query “rechte” (15.07.09)

Google.ch with query “rechte” (15.07.09)

Google.fr with query “droits” (14.07.09)

Google.pt with query “direitos” (14.07.09)

Google.es with query “derechos” (13.07.09)

Google.it with query "diritto al" OR "diritto all" OR "diritto alla" (13.07.09)

Google.ro with query “drepturile” (13.07.09)

Google.mo with query “drepturile” (13.07.09)

Google.ru with query “prava” (13.07.09)

Google.com.tr with query “haklari” (17.07.09)

Google.jp with query “unicode character issue” (16.07.09)

Google.hk with query “unicode character issue” (17.07.09)

Google.com.ph with query “karapatang” (16.07.09)

Google.ci with query “droits” (17.07.09)

Google.com.au with query “rights” (14.07.09)

Google.ca with query “rights” (15.07.09)

Google.ca with query “droits” (15.07.09)

Google.com with query “rights” (14.07.09)

Google.com with query “derechos” (15.07.09)

Google.com.mx with query “derechos” (15.07.09)

Google.com.br with query “direitos” (15.07.09)

Google.ar with query “derechos” (15.07.09)

Google.pe with query “derechos” (15.07.09)

Data Storage

The top 100 results per query are stored for validation purposes. In Firefox Save Page As -> Web Page, complete. Data sets available below as attachments.

Top 10 results per country with unique issues marked spreadheet: top10rightstypespercountry_specific26aug.xls

Findings

Countries could be said to have distinctive concerns, compared to other countries, as read from Google results. For example, everyman’s rights in Finland, prostitutes’ rights in the Netherlands, computer programmers’ rights in Japan and the right to oblivion in Italy (that is, not everything should be saved). Note that the specific rights language per country is retained, meaning that LGBT rights in the United States, and homosexual rights in Hong Kong have not been made equivalents. Note, too, that given the limited sample of countries and the method for selection, the most greatly shared rights across countries are not the subject of analysis.

Visualizations

Design by Vera Bekema and Anne Helmond

Printable A0 PDF: TOTAL_ICONS_A0_FINAL.pdf.

Original InDesign document: NationalitiesofIssuesA0INDD_ICONS.zip