Category: viz reviews

As opioid abuse has risen across the United States in the past few years, the epidemic has been covered and humanized in a number of ways, from deep personal narratives to more character-driven reviews of innovative solutions.  One data visualization from the Washington Post from October 2017 takes a different approach for its readers, by comparing different opioids that are currently being abused with one that is more commonly-prescribed: morphine.

One-by-one, the article ties information on the uses, historical prescription patterns, and role in the current wave of abuse for drugs such as oxycodone, methadone, heroin, and fentanyl with simple graphics to compare their strength to that of morphine. In doing so, the article attempts to visually reinforce the gravity of each drug’s potency, both on drug users and the state of the crisis.

This goal is most clearly illustrated in the final drug profiled by the article, carfentanil. The article breaks its established physical structure of visual-followed-by-text, and embeds two striking stories of carfentanil’s use as an elephant tranquilizer and bio-weapon over the visualizations 10,000 pink squares (to represent that it is 10,000 times stronger than morphine).

While the visualizations effectively conveys its point using striking colors and a simple symbology, it misses its mark by assuming its readers have some understanding (and perhaps experience) with the strength of morphine. In fact, at no point in the article is ‘strength’ precisely defined, although it is mentioned that this unit of comparison is borrowed from medicine and law enforcement. However, for those without a clear baseline of the pain-mitigating and euphoric effects of morphine, it is difficult to fully understand the scale of comparison.

Source: “See how deadly street opioids like ‘elephant tranquilizer’ have become,” by Dan Keating and Samuel Granados, Washington Post, October 25, 2017. 

“How reporters around the world risk their lives for the truth”

As the Internet speeds up the spread of information, the world becomes more transparent. However, the journalists, who share the information with us, shoulder more of the danger.

Created by Luke Shuman, the visualization shows the number of journalists killed in 10 countries between 2000 and 2015. The goal is to draw the attention of media workers as well as the government. The authors want the reader to notice the dangerous situation of journalists and protect those journalists. Their target audience appears to be media workers and the government.

The authors use a world map as a base panel to show the number of casualties and add four more analysis based on the other data source. At the bottom of the picture, the authors examine the relationship between casualties and the media type, between casualties and press freedom index, between casualties and reporters’ employment status. Most important, the authors point out that the impunity rate is extremely high. Interestingly, there is a special sentence lies on the bottom, saying that “Data courtesy of Freedom House and the Community to Protect Journalists”. Apparently, the authors want the United Nations to help solve the crisis.

This is an effective visualization because it presents the “dead journalists” topic to the target audience and would successfully draw their attention. The important data is marked by red color, which stands out with the black base map. Furthermore, the high impunity rate stands out at the bottom and conveys the most important message to the audience: the global community must protect those who perform this vital service.

Although the visualization conveys the important message as the authors expect, some analysis seems unreasonable. For example, the conclusion that more news online means more dead internet journalists seems unreliable. As the internet grows fast, the number of internet journalists dramatically increases, which is obvious. We need to compare the ratio of death internet journalists and the ratio of print journalists to make a conclusion.

Source: https://www.good.is/infographics/issue-38-citizen-journalism#open

Original Article

As China’s GDP increases relative to the rest of the world, its investments in foreign countries has also increased. Before 2005, China had “no major investment in Africa”. However, in 2013, China invested in over three times as many countries around the world including over ten African countries.

The article “The World According to China” zooms in and out on a world map while using captions and text overlays to tell the story. The main visualization takes a look at China’s share of each country’s foreign investments as well as the risk associated with that country.

The author’s target audience is those interested in political aspects of China’s recent investments. Through deep dives into the industries receiving Chinese money in countries where the US seems to be withdrawing resources, the author aims to prove that China’s investments are worrying and could have harmful effects on “Western” initiatives in the future.

I think the visualization was effective in giving numbers to connect to a vague idea that I had seen thrown around. It was also effective in convincing me that China was heavily benefiting from investing in countries that were in turmoil.

“China’s money has made it harder for Western-led institutions like the World Bank to demand economic reforms and environmental standards. In all, China was the largest investor in five of the 10 riskiest countries in the world.” 

While the build up made me feel informed enough to draw conclusions, I believe that some of the explanatory text were not as effective as it could have been. For example, the final sentence would have had more impact if it was a conclusion or a description of the effect of the information given instead of another statistic.

Social policies have always been tied to a deeply political process. This web of campaign contributions related to Proposition 47 in California was created by Len De Groot and Paige St. John. In 2014, the Los Angeles Times published an article describing how donors can influence public policy and law through charitable grants and direct financial contributions. Prop. 47 was designed to reduce criminal penalties for drug use and petty theft. Each of the five major donors (The California Endowment, Ford Foundation, Chuck Feeney, George Soros, and Roseburg Foundation) gave grants to organizations that then made financial donations to organizations who supported Prop. 47. The visualizations shows in red the direct campaign contributions and political advocacy in support of Prop. 47. The grey arrows show advocacy grants given and received by organizations as related to the five major contributors.

The goal of the visualization was to show how money could be travelled through multiple hands to support different campaigns. It accompanied a larger narrative article in the L.A. Times that described how charitable grants could be used to influence public policy since they are not reported the same way campaign contributions are. The audience of this visualization is Los Angeles Times readers and residents of California. Much like an investigation map often depicted on crime shows, the web of contributions directly shows the ways each organization supported Proposition 47.

The visualization shows the five major contributors on the outside, framing the inner web of grants, financial donations, and advocacy. The visualization is engaging and visually striking. At first glance, the reader can quickly gather a basic level of information. Since the visualization is interactive, readers can further their engagement with the information presented – finding out the year a grant was given or amount of the donation.

Visualization: “The Big Campaign: Prop 47 is part of larger push”

Article: “Prop. 47 puts state at center of a national push for sentencing reform”

The wall that President Trump wants between the United States and Mexico is a highly politicized topic. Perhaps that’s why NYT’s visualization has a neutral invitation as its title: “See what’s in place already.”

The visualization’s ideal audience are US citizens who are uninformed about the current border, from all types of political background. The facts stated that have no political leaning, such as the amount of federal land around the border, and the types of fences. This phrasing frames the visualization as unbiased, as an informant versus an influencer.

The visualization is scrolling, which allows the story to unfold before your eyes, and allows graphics to build on each other, such as adding the segments for fences but keeping the shading for land allocation. However, the scrolling feature also means that caption for the visualization can obstruct the view.

Shading and diagrams are selected carefully for effective representation, such as land, fencing, or specific locations. However, the visualization switches definitions for features, such as highlighting short fencing and tall fencing with the same color, which can result in confusion. Sources and dates for the data are often cited in the corners. Also integrated into the visualization are real-life pictures, which add credibility and emotional appeal.

While the visualization has its strengths and weaknesses, the overall neutral tone of the visualization, credibility of its data, easy to understand graphics, and the layman wording keeps the viewer’s attention through the whole visualization. These features help the visualization achieve its goal to educate its audience about the existing border protection between United States and Mexico.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/02/05/us/border-wall.html