Today, we cross-post news from Data Is Plural, an excellent website and newsletter that points to new and often unique datasets as they are released. Today’s edition of the newsletter featured a dataset that current and aspiring VDA users may get really excited about:

LocalView, developed by Soubhik Barari and Tyler Simko, “is the largest dataset of local government public meetings — the central policy-making process in American local government — as they are captured on video.” In a recent paper, the authors describe how they built the dataset, which is based on 130,000+ YouTube-hosted videos of such meetings in 1,000+ US cities and counties, covering the years 2006 to 2022. The dataset lists each meeting’s date, jurisdiction, and government body (e.g., municipal council, school board, etc.), plus the video’s ID, title, channel, transcript, and more.

To see the post, visit the Data Is Plural website.