Iwac Dashboard
IWAC Dashboard
An interactive visualization platform for exploring the Islam West Africa Collection — a dataset of 19,000+ documents on Islam and Muslims in West Africa.
🌐 Access the Dashboard | 📊 Dataset on Hugging Face
What Is This?
The IWAC Dashboard transforms a large scholarly dataset into an accessible, interactive exploration tool. It enables researchers to discover patterns, relationships, and trends across thousands of documents — without writing code or querying databases.
Designed for: Scholars in Islamic studies, African studies, religious studies, media studies, digital humanities, and related fields.
Languages: Fully bilingual interface (English/French) with real-time switching.
Geographic & Temporal Coverage
- Countries: Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Benin, Togo, Niger, Nigeria
- Time span: Documents from 1912 to present
- Document types: Press articles, academic publications, archival documents, audiovisual materials
Explore the Dashboard
Overview
The entry point provides key statistics at a glance: total documents, language distribution, country coverage, and recent additions to the collection.
Geographic Analysis
| Page | What You Can Discover |
|---|---|
| Country Distribution | Which West African countries have the most documentation? Interactive treemap showing document density by nation. |
| World Map | Geographic spread of the collection visualized on an interactive choropleth map. |
| Sources Map | Where are the newspapers and publication sources located? |
| Entity Geographic Footprint | Select any person, organization, or topic and see where they appear across the region. Track an imam's influence, an organization's reach, or a concept's geographic spread. |
Temporal Analysis
| Page | What You Can Discover |
|---|---|
| Timeline | How has coverage of Islam in West Africa evolved over time? View growth trajectories, monthly additions, and identify periods of intensive documentation. |
| Categories Over Time | How has the composition of document types changed across decades? |
| References by Year | Publication patterns and bibliographic trends across time periods. |
Textual Analysis
| Page | What You Can Discover |
|---|---|
| Word Cloud & Frequency | What terms appear most frequently? Filter by country or year to see regional and temporal variations in terminology. |
| Word Co-occurrence | Which terms appear together? Identify semantic clusters and conceptual relationships in the literature. |
| Topic Modeling | What themes emerge from automated analysis? Browse detected topics and their prevalence. |
| Sensitive Terms | Track concerning or problematic terminology over time. Useful for critical discourse analysis and understanding media framing. |
Network Analysis
| Page | What You Can Discover |
|---|---|
| Entity Network | How are people, organizations, places, and topics connected? Interactive graph showing relationships based on co-mentions in documents. |
| Spatial Network | Which locations are mentioned together? Geographic clusters and regional connections visualized on a map. |
Entity & Reference Data
| Page | What You Can Discover |
|---|---|
| Entity Index | Searchable directory of all persons, organizations, events, locations, and topics extracted from the collection. |
| Language Distribution | What languages are represented? Breakdown by document type and country. |
| Top Authors | Who has contributed most to the scholarly literature? Publication counts and activity periods. |
Research Questions You Can Explore
The dashboard helps researchers investigate questions such as:
Geographic patterns
- Where is Islamic practice and scholarship most documented in francophone West Africa?
- How does coverage differ between coastal and Sahelian countries?
Temporal dynamics
- How has media attention to Islam in West Africa changed since independence?
- What events correlate with spikes in documentation?
Actors and networks
- Who are the key religious leaders, scholars, and organizations mentioned?
- How are different actors connected through co-mentions?
Discourse analysis
- What terminology characterizes coverage of Islam in this region?
- How do word patterns differ between countries or time periods?
- What potentially problematic framings appear in the sources?
Entity tracking
- Where does a specific religious leader appear in the documentary record?
- What is the geographic footprint of a particular Islamic organization?
Features
- No coding required — All visualizations are interactive and filterable through the interface
- Shareable views — URLs preserve your filters and selections for sharing with colleagues
- Offline capable — Works without internet connection after initial load
- Dark/Light themes — Choose your preferred display mode
- Responsive design — Works on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices
- Export options — Download visualizations as SVG files
Data Source
All data comes from the Islam West Africa Collection on Hugging Face, a curated dataset documenting how francophone West African newspapers have covered Islam and Muslims from the colonial period to the present.
The collection includes:
- Articles: Press coverage from major West African newspapers
- Publications: Academic papers, books, and scholarly works
- Documents: Archival materials and unpublished texts
- Audiovisual: Recordings and multimedia materials
- References: Bibliographic citations and author metadata
Citation
If you use this dashboard in your research, please cite:
Madore, Frédérick. Islam West Africa Collection Dashboard.
https://fmadore.github.io/iwac-dashboard/
For Developers
Technical details and contribution guide
Technology Stack
- Framework: SvelteKit with Svelte 5, TypeScript
- UI: shadcn-svelte, Tailwind CSS v4
- Visualizations: LayerChart, D3.js, Leaflet, Sigma.js
- Data: Python scripts generating static JSON from Hugging Face
Quick Start
# Install dependencies
npm install
# Start development server
npm run dev
# Build for production
npm run build
Data Generation
cd scripts
pip install -r requirements.txt
python generate_overview_stats.py # Run individual generators
Project Structure
src/routes/— Page componentssrc/lib/components/visualizations/— Chart and map componentssrc/lib/stores/— State managementscripts/— Python data generationstatic/data/— Pre-computed JSON files
See CLAUDE.md for detailed development guidelines.
License
This project is open source. The underlying dataset is available under its own license on Hugging Face.
