KBO Cheerleaders
Authors: Jeff Craggy
Abstract: This project introduces an open-source interactive R Shiny application designed to explore the world of Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) cheerleaders. The app consolidates profiles, photos, and biographical details from Namu Wiki and team pages, providing users with a seamless experience for discovering and interacting with their favorite cheerleaders. Key features include interactive tables built with reactable and gt, as well as dynamic visualizations that display follower statistics across teams and individual leaderboards. Users can easily compare follower counts per cheerleader by team, making this app a comprehensive and engaging tool for diving into the vibrant culture of KBO cheerleading.
Full Description:
Key Features and Technology Stack:
Expandable reactable Tables: On the “Team Overview” tab, users can view a reactable table where each row represents a team. Expanding a row reveals detailed profiles of individual cheerleaders, complete with follower counts by platform. Each cheerleader’s row also includes bar charts for total followers and platform-specific statistics. Clicking on a cheerleader’s photo within the table returns users to the insights page, displaying her individual stats.
Dynamic Team and Cheerleader Selection: A dropdown menu allowing users to select any KBO team. Once a team is selected, the app automatically updates the cheerleader roster and switches to the “Insights” tab, where the team’s photo, logo, and hat are prominently displayed.
Interactive Insights Page: When a cheerleader is selected, the insights view transitions from team-level to individual cheerleader-level, highlighting her photo, biographical details (DT), and social media statistics in bslib-powered cards. The app fetches data from Namu Wiki and official team pages, ensuring accurate content.
Seamless Navigation Across Tabs: The “Followers” tab allows users to explore aggregate metrics for each team. Clicking on a team icon, will redirect users back to the “Insights” tab, focusing once again on the selected team’s details.
Top Cheerleaders Leaderboards: The “Top Cheerleaders” tab highlights the leading cheerleaders across platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Each leaderboard features detailed cards that include the cheerleader’s team logo, picture, a link to her Namu Wiki page, total subscribers, historical trendlines, total views, and a views-per-subscriber ratio. gt tables which leverage JavaScript elements for a rich exploration of the leaderboard data.
Comprehensive Social Media Analytics: The app integrates data visualizations to provide a comparative analysis of cheerleader popularity. Followers, likes, and subscribers are analyzed across different platforms, giving users a multi-dimensional view of the cheerleaders’ digital influence.
Robust Data Integration and Analysis: The app’s data processing pipeline utilizes rvest for web scraping and httr2 for API requests, ensuring that all cheerleader and team data is current. The app also employs advanced techniques for matching image URLs to social media profiles, creating an enriched user experience.
User-Friendly Design and Experience: Built with bslib, the app’s UI features responsive layouts, ensuring optimal display across devices. Cards and layout elements are dynamically adjusted based on user interactions, delivering a visually appealing experience.
This R Shiny app is not just a data-driven tool but a gateway into the lively culture of KBO cheerleading. It consolidates photos, profiles, and statistics from hundreds of web pages into one cohesive platform. By aggregating data from multiple sources, including Namu Wiki and team sites, the app offers a seamless experience for fans and curious users alike. Whether users are dedicated followers of a specific team or are interested in exploring the cheerleading landscape across the KBO League, this app provides an engaging and comprehensive journey. Users can discover their favorite cheerleaders, track their social media influence, and dive deep into the vibrant cheerleading culture that defines the KBO experience. Enjoy!
Shiny app: Cheerleaders!
Repo: GitHub - JBC-Inc/KBOCheerleaders: KBO Cheerleaders!
Vignette: Korean Baseball Organization Cheerleaders interactive database. • KBOCheerleaders
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