A Fascinating Look Inside Those 1.1 Million Open-Internet Comments

When the Federal Communications Commission asked for public comments about the issue of keeping the Internet free and open, the response was huge.

The San Francisco data analysis firm Quid looked beyond keywords to find the sentiment and arguments in those public comments. The map shows that every emergent theme was "pro" net neutrality, or supports the idea of a level playing field for content on the Internet. Taken with the entire body of comments sampled, there weren't enough unique or organic anti-net-neutrality comments to register on the map.

Unlocking the data in the comments -- using technology to show relationships between them and high occurrences of them -- helped amplify some arguments that otherwise weren't getting much play. One cluster focused on preserving net neutrality to maintain a diversity of opinion. The related but separate cluster of arguments associated net neutrality with the American dream.