The 2013 Brit Awards was the usual industry affair. The occasional controversial moment across its history has distracted from the fact that it has always been a space for music industry showboating – with very occasional edgy moments. This review of the show from the Huffington Post describes it as ‘tame’, which seems an appropriate description. As with most cultural events now, Twitter has been used by The Guardian to show real time responses to what was happening – although most of the posts included are from celebrities. So digital by-product data finds its way into a traditional media outlet in order to make visible the view on the ground.
Twitter posts are not the only data about the event that have been made available. The Guardian have also posted a link to a complete list of all of the Brits award winners across the history of the ceremony (along with a link to a data journalism guide). In my book I’ve described this as data play. In this case you can actually revisit the history of the show to see its engagement with different artists, genres, scenes, movements, and so on. This is also illustrative of the cultural shift toward an engagement with data for fun. Instead of having an impression of the history of the event, we can now actually play with and enact this history using the data.
