Shatter

Showing subreddit names
Shatter - connections between all default subreddits

Inspiration

We built Shatter because we noticed how easy it is for social media users to become trapped in an ‘echo-chamber’ - where they are constantly fed the same type of content, published by the same group of people. This is by design on most platforms, through the combination of a subscriber or follower system, and a recommendations page based on content the user enjoys.

While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, we believe it’s important to take a step back every once in while and consider what content you’re consuming and why.

What it does

Our first iteration of Shatter uses data from reddit. It takes in a list of subreddits and displays the connections between them on a map. Hovering over the nodes displays subreddit names, and hovering the connections displays their exact strength on a scale from 0, the weakest, to 1, the strongest. Shatter also provides an ‘insularity score’ which rates the average similarity of the subreddit’s displayed.

How we built it

Our data visualisation uses d3.js and data analysis is done in Python.

Subreddit data was collected using reddit's API. We read the description of each subreddit and extracted any mentions of other subreddits. Using this data, we built a map of connections between over 10,000 subreddits.

Challenges we ran into

None of us knew how to write HTML, CSS, or Javascript, which of course made things difficult (we were trying to make a web application)
Figuring out the best way to measure subreddit similarity with the data available. We didn't have the time to gather or analyse huge data sets, so we went with a simpler approach.
Integrating all of the components together.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Everything, really. Everything we did was almost totally new to us and its everyone in the group's first time participating in a Hackathon.

What we learned

Fundamentals of HTML & Javascript
How to plan a project and distribute work
d3.js
using APIs for data gathering
a few things about django and databases, even though we didn't get these components integrated with everything else

What's next for Shatter

Fully integrating our components into a functional, standalone application
Recommending alternate content/communities
Allow users to login to their social media accounts and load their subscribed subreddits/followed accounts/etc.
Adding support for more social media platforms (twitter, youtube, etc.)