As an American-based animation company that cherishes our democratic freedoms and values our rich political heritage, it was truly an honor to work on a project that is helping to shed further light on lobbying in the U.S. political process. It's not every day that we get to help a team that is using big data to help bring transparency to Washington.
Led by MIT political science professor, Dr. In Song Kim, LobbyView parses millions of lobbying reports filed in the United States and makes them accessible to researchers, journalists, and any concerned citizens. This robust, consolidated database makes it possible to conduct exciting new research and analysis. And because the database can be easily downloaded and combined with other commercial databases, the impact of this resource is that much greater. LobbyView helps us analyze political networks, understand lobbying at firm and industry levels, and learn more about ways special interest groups are influencing American politics.
In short, LobbyView gives us visibility into whose interests are more or less represented and empowers Americans to have serious conversations about how we can improve our democratic institutions. Whether you are on the Left, Right, or Center, we hope this resource will empower you to be better informed citizens. So please enjoy the video and check out the great public resource that is LobbyView.