Each bubble marks where a Parler video was recorded on January 6, 2021, in and around the US Capitol in Washington DC. Bubble size reflects video duration. Use the time bar at the bottom to filter by recording time; click any bubble to watch the clip.
Parler was a social media platform that positioned itself as a free-speech alternative to mainstream networks, popular with right-wing and far-right users. On January 6, 2021, thousands of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol building in an attempt to disrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election result. Many participants filmed the events and uploaded videos to Parler.
In the days that followed, Apple, Google, and Amazon suspended Parler's services over its handling of content inciting violence. Before the platform went fully offline, security researcher @donk_enby automated the bulk download of approximately 1.1 million videos — many of which still contained unredacted GPS coordinates in their EXIF metadata.
Volunteers from the Parler-Analysis collective extracted and published that metadata, enabling precise geographic placement of recordings made at the Capitol.
Video metadata: Parler-Analysis (GitHub Gist)
Geodata CSV: data.ixmaps.com · Parler/RiotGeo.csv
Video archive: d2hxwnssq7ss7g.cloudfront.net
Visualization: ixmaps