One of this project's alumni, Nick Diakopoulos, spent the past summer working in California as a journalism research fellow. While working with us, Nick brought his journalistic experience and work in human-computer interaction to bear on a discussion of transparency in reportage, computer interfaces, and videogames. In the past month Nick created an interactive map for the Sacramento Bee--the purpose is to visualize the distribution of federal stimulus money to various counties throughout the state. We can see that he applied many of the ideas we had spoken during our research: transparency of construction, directed activity for infographics, and process journalism. Please check it out now, along with this "quiz version," then read our analysis after the jump.
Whether or not Obama's stimulus bill is responsible for the recession's recent slowdown or not, one of the most common complaints from conservative pundits is that we can't see where all this federal money is going: a lack of transparency or comprehensible disclosure inhibits our ability to understand the sheer number of local projects being aided. Although the information is available in some form at every governor's office throughout the country, accessing it can sometimes be difficult. Synthesizing it is a more daunting task altogether, undertaken here by Nick's map.
On the left you see the map of California broken down into counties. Although the cursor doesn't change from the default black arrow when scrolling over clickable sections of the map, selecting any given county will make it turn red and bring up its detail information in the table and graph on the right. There is also a toggle at the top to change the view from a basic county-to-county comparison that ignores population density to a view that displays the breakdown per capita--this is particularly useful if, like me, you have little knowledge of California's population distribution. The bar graph on the right breaks down the percentage of total funding given to a number of categories such a Labor, Education, Housing, and Public Safety; hovering over any of the red bars displays the exact amount spent on each sector. The table above lists the name of every project and the amount of aid it received, and clicking on any one will bring up a detail view that adds the beginning date of the project's funding.
The map is a work-in-progress, so it's an example of process journalism; this means that the journalistic artifact has been created based on the most complete data available at the time of creation, recognizing the fact that the data is nevertheless incomplete. In order to remedy this incompleteness, the creators promise to update it as new information comes in. This is how journalistic blogs work, in contrast to the "product journalism" usually practiced by newspapers (the "product" being a complete story that doesn't need to be updated). Even though the map does a great job of synthesizing the information from the governor's office, Nick took the project one step further by making the quiz version. This is an example of what Bobby and Adam identified as "directed activity" for infographics, one of the ways they came up with to explain how to make infoviz more gamelike. Let's take a look at how the quiz guides the player through the array of data and features of the map.
The first question requests a simple county search for Sacramento County--easy to find because Sacramento is large enough of a city to be labeled on the map. The second question brings the player to the attention of the per capita toggle, because they must click it to show that Tehama, Colusa, and Sutter counties all have the highest funding per capita. The third question asks the player about Sutter county in particular, which they probably noticed on the question before when it became a dark green on toggling per capita. Asking about the funding for Water and Environments projects in particular, it draws the player toward the red bar graph for the first time. The fourth question returns the player to Sacramento county for a similar search of sector percentages and amounts (this question is thus redundant).
The fifth question sends non-Californians in particular on a search for the somewhat obscure Yuba County, leading to a healthy bit of slow mousing over of counties to find it; the question asks which single project received the most funding, leading players to see that they can sort the information by budget instead of alphabetically. The final question draws players to the color density bar in a search for the number of counties received $100 million dollars (or displayed as very light green). As you can see, these questions effectively draw players to every feature of the map within the course of a few minutes. At the end, your completion time on the quiz is compared with that of other players--an ancillary feature that might be fun for quiz-heads (but not for people like me who had to search for a minute to find Yuba County).
As you can see at the bottom of the non-quiz map, the access to information granted here has caused quite a debate in the comments section. Usually on articles about the stimulus or the recession all one can see in the comments is partisan bickering. While this is still present here, the map has allowed more incisive, non-partisan critique from California residents on the amount of funding given to projects they may not approve of. Arguments spring up between residents of different counties, splitting hairs about which of their home counties deserve more money based on their needs.
There are also comments asking the creators of the map to add missing information and features, showing that the map has engaged viewers in a design critique. One major repeated question is whether projects listed twice under different spellings are in fact being funded double, whether this is an error in the governor's records, or whether the creators of the map were being careless with their table-building. Although this is a far cry from the ideal public forum, the amount of discussion generated and allowed by the map shows that such interactives have unique strengths and value over a written breakdown of the same information.
There are only a few ways we can think of to improve on this interactive. First, there is no way to filter or segment the projects for the sectors they fall under, causing the table on the right to be a bit too raw and difficult to navigate. Second, while the use of light green shading on the map makes for an attractive presentation, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the lighter shades (making the final question on the quiz almost impossible for me). Third, and perhaps most importantly, there is no accompanying editorial to comment and contextualize the issue further. Much like many of the newsgames and infographics we see on news media sites today, the map exists in its own little world. It stands on its own of course, but more synthesis across the website would help make the dream of multimodal journalism complete here (exemplified by Wired Online's recent Cutthroat Capitalism). Finally, although the short blurb at the top of the non-quiz map explains that it is a work in progress, it doesn't link to prior archived versions. This would help mitigate any confusion readers might have on returning to examine it later and finding inconsistencies with their previous viewing.
On the left you see the map of California broken down into counties. Although the cursor doesn't change from the default black arrow when scrolling over clickable sections of the map, selecting any given county will make it turn red and bring up its detail information in the table and graph on the right. There is also a toggle at the top to change the view from a basic county-to-county comparison that ignores population density to a view that displays the breakdown per capita--this is particularly useful if, like me, you have little knowledge of California's population distribution. The bar graph on the right breaks down the percentage of total funding given to a number of categories such a Labor, Education, Housing, and Public Safety; hovering over any of the red bars displays the exact amount spent on each sector. The table above lists the name of every project and the amount of aid it received, and clicking on any one will bring up a detail view that adds the beginning date of the project's funding.
The map is a work-in-progress, so it's an example of process journalism; this means that the journalistic artifact has been created based on the most complete data available at the time of creation, recognizing the fact that the data is nevertheless incomplete. In order to remedy this incompleteness, the creators promise to update it as new information comes in. This is how journalistic blogs work, in contrast to the "product journalism" usually practiced by newspapers (the "product" being a complete story that doesn't need to be updated). Even though the map does a great job of synthesizing the information from the governor's office, Nick took the project one step further by making the quiz version. This is an example of what Bobby and Adam identified as "directed activity" for infographics, one of the ways they came up with to explain how to make infoviz more gamelike. Let's take a look at how the quiz guides the player through the array of data and features of the map.
The first question requests a simple county search for Sacramento County--easy to find because Sacramento is large enough of a city to be labeled on the map. The second question brings the player to the attention of the per capita toggle, because they must click it to show that Tehama, Colusa, and Sutter counties all have the highest funding per capita. The third question asks the player about Sutter county in particular, which they probably noticed on the question before when it became a dark green on toggling per capita. Asking about the funding for Water and Environments projects in particular, it draws the player toward the red bar graph for the first time. The fourth question returns the player to Sacramento county for a similar search of sector percentages and amounts (this question is thus redundant).
The fifth question sends non-Californians in particular on a search for the somewhat obscure Yuba County, leading to a healthy bit of slow mousing over of counties to find it; the question asks which single project received the most funding, leading players to see that they can sort the information by budget instead of alphabetically. The final question draws players to the color density bar in a search for the number of counties received $100 million dollars (or displayed as very light green). As you can see, these questions effectively draw players to every feature of the map within the course of a few minutes. At the end, your completion time on the quiz is compared with that of other players--an ancillary feature that might be fun for quiz-heads (but not for people like me who had to search for a minute to find Yuba County).
As you can see at the bottom of the non-quiz map, the access to information granted here has caused quite a debate in the comments section. Usually on articles about the stimulus or the recession all one can see in the comments is partisan bickering. While this is still present here, the map has allowed more incisive, non-partisan critique from California residents on the amount of funding given to projects they may not approve of. Arguments spring up between residents of different counties, splitting hairs about which of their home counties deserve more money based on their needs.
There are also comments asking the creators of the map to add missing information and features, showing that the map has engaged viewers in a design critique. One major repeated question is whether projects listed twice under different spellings are in fact being funded double, whether this is an error in the governor's records, or whether the creators of the map were being careless with their table-building. Although this is a far cry from the ideal public forum, the amount of discussion generated and allowed by the map shows that such interactives have unique strengths and value over a written breakdown of the same information.
There are only a few ways we can think of to improve on this interactive. First, there is no way to filter or segment the projects for the sectors they fall under, causing the table on the right to be a bit too raw and difficult to navigate. Second, while the use of light green shading on the map makes for an attractive presentation, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the lighter shades (making the final question on the quiz almost impossible for me). Third, and perhaps most importantly, there is no accompanying editorial to comment and contextualize the issue further. Much like many of the newsgames and infographics we see on news media sites today, the map exists in its own little world. It stands on its own of course, but more synthesis across the website would help make the dream of multimodal journalism complete here (exemplified by Wired Online's recent Cutthroat Capitalism). Finally, although the short blurb at the top of the non-quiz map explains that it is a work in progress, it doesn't link to prior archived versions. This would help mitigate any confusion readers might have on returning to examine it later and finding inconsistencies with their previous viewing.
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