On a weekly basis (if I’m lucky) one of the things that I find myself most in need of is a common area to find real-life examples of the best practices that we all try to follow. But talk is cheap and a little bit of visual awesomeness goes a long way so…
Why? Well, I don’t know how many of you often find yourselves swimming upstream and in the dark when it comes to sweet-talking clients out of ideas that you know are, em, well, sometimes just a wee bit unusual, not realistic, not good practice, a few branches short of a tree etc., etc.. If you are, then you also know how, though these conversations can sometimes be rewarding, oftentimes they are not (all recipients of puzzled looks or polite silence followed by the inevitable request to “do it anyway” or “can’t you just…” raise your hands).
I’m hoping that this new platform will give us quick access to quality examples of information design–solutions that illustrate a specific direction or idea that we’re trying to pitch to our teams, stakeholders and clients. Often I find myself scrambling to create comps to better prove or show a point. Nothing wrong with that, but if there’s a place where I can follow knowledgeable designers and their work rather than wading through Google searches or sites that warehouse images, I’m all for it (though where would I be without my favorite beer graphic?).
The Visual.ly social media platform, coupled with the excellent blogs out there (ranging from good critiques on the visual.ly blog, to case studies and reality checks by chartsnthings, as well as the usual suspects like the Guardian and Flowing Data and many more) is a damn good thing, and I’m excited to see this take off.
It is by now a cliché to to point out how developing countries most in need of what data journalism provides–a credible, fact-based approach that cuts through the noise of bias to help average citizens become informed participants in the problem-solving processes of improving social-political challenges–is not (quite) manifesting itself where it is most needed. Yeah, that’s a long sentence. But Bolivia is a case in point.
A search for data visualization in Bolivia yields mostly European NGOs posting myriad Tableau and GoogleMap visualizations about the usual statistics on health and economy–laudable efforts in their own right, but not a good representation of the state of information and data visualization in Bolivia proper.
To find what Bolivians are doing, you need lots of time and a high level of tolerance for dead links. But it’s out there. As a recent example, Bolivian@s Globales produced a modern, candid video on the state of Bolivia. It’s a solid blend of information and optimism, and shows us what today’s Bolivians are capable of producing in the digital space.
And–in a country where where the government can be reliably counted upon to discourage openness and transparency–multimedia, even the simple use of video, is critical. Fortunately, there is evidence that digital journalism is growing. The major papers went online years ago, but more importantly, there are now digital journalism sites and signs that Bolivian bloggers are growing, both in quality and in numbers.
Crowdsourcing, mapping and social media in Bolivian elections
Sadly, one of the most encouraging examples of data visualization and social media in Bolivia went dark, but the screenshots and documentation that remain are encouraging. In 2009, Voces Bolivianas and other Bolivians began using data visualization to monitor Bolivian elections (Elecciones 2.0 Bolivia). See how monitoring was crowdsourced through GoogleMaps:
Coupled with Twitter, a Facebook page and other social media, Elecciones 2.0 Bolivia was groundbreaking for Bolivians. Re-visto, an online investigative journalism site run by Deutche Welle, interviewed Mario Duran (a noted Bolivian blogger) on the groundswell of acceptance and use of social media and digital journalism in the 2009 elections (English translation here). And there was a New York Times write-up of how Bolivians were covering the elections referendum on Twitter.
Other Bolivian data visualization projects of note:
Ushahidi (a project that develops open-source tools for programmers) provided the platform for a CrowdMap tool that Bolivians are using to document civil unrest in Bolivia. Guatemalans are using the tool to map incidents of citizen extortion.
Bolivia (as well as other developing nations and rural communities in the U.S.) faces another challenge–reliable internet speeds. A recent Bolivian infographic (in Spanish) describes the problem and the social media citizen lobbying effort (Mas y major internet en Bolivia–Better and more Internet in Bolivia) to address it.
I’ll be honest. As I was researching information for this post, I found myself frustrated with the fact that, after days of searching, I couldn’t easily point to a few examples of cutting edge data visualization pieces. There was a part of me that wanted to say to the world, “see, we’re doing it too, you just haven’t found us.” But I’m walking away from this experience with a much more sober understanding of the challenges that Bolivians face. I’m not a journalist. I no longer live in Bolivia. I don’t have to deal with civil unrest, strikes, sketchy Internet access and the uneasy history that Bolivian governments have bequeathed to journalists and citizens concerned with civil liberties and human rights.
The willingness of Bolivians to put in the sweat equity to learn, exploit and disseminate these technologies is self-evident and encouraging.
The next steps, as I see them? Helping Bolivian journalists continue to embrace data journalism, raising awareness of open source data platforms such as Tableau and Ushahidi, and empowering today’s technology-minded Bolivians to learn how to turn information into power through openness and transparency. I’d be most interested in hearing from you on how this is happening and look forward to writing more about it.
