Say My Name: The Evolving Visibility of LGBT+ Identities in U.S. Online Media (2014–2024)

The screenshot of the site I’m still debugging

Full Data Set

https://saymyname2024.cargo.site/

Intro

Over the past decade, U.S. media coverage of LGBTQ+ issues has surged and receded, sometimes focusing on the community as a whole and at other times zeroing in on a single identity.

This project tracks weekly mentions of the relative keywords of four identities, “gay,” “lesbian,” “bisexual,” and “transgender” in U.S. online news, revealing how each identity’s visibility spikes around legal rulings, cultural milestones, and community events.

My original motivation for this project was one day I came across an article asking, “Where have all the lesbians gone?” I realized that, although these identity groups are equally large, they receive wildly different levels of media exposure and public discussion—I mean, where are my bisexual buddies?

Medium/technology:

Data Collection: Meltwater

Iterations: p5.js, Flourish

Final Version: Figma, RawGraph, Cargo.site

Methodology:

1. Collecting 2014-2024 data

I collect from Meltwater, the media monitoring platform i’ve been using at my media relations job;

• Data for each identity was divided into separate CSV files by year, resulting in 11 files (2014–2024) per identity.
• Started with the Area Chart template on Flourish. I created a ten-year trend visualization by mapping the volume of Mentions for each identity (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender)

keyword inputs-

Transgender{3,} OR Transexual

Bisexual{3,} OR Bisexuality