By Logan Johns
Data visualization has become an essential tool in journalism today bcause it helps explain difficult to understand issues and reveal hidden patterns through visual storytelling. In three impactful stories in The Washington Post’s “Fatal Force,” Media Matters for America’s examination of conservative media coverage of Vice President Kamala Harris, and GreenCLT’s reporting on environmental racism in Charlotte, North Carolina, visual data plays a pivotal role in helping readers understand issues of systemic racism in the United States. Each article uses visual tools differently—whether it’s timelines, maps, or color-coded sections—to highlight issues of police violence, media bias, and environmental racism. This blog post explores how these three articles use data visualization to present evidence and elevate our understanding of social justice issues, making intricate information more impactful for readers.
The Washington Post’s “Fatal Force”
By: Washington Post Contributors
Updated: October 22, 2024
Elements Used
The Washington Post‘s “Fatal Force” project is an ongoing investigation into police shootings in the United States. This reporting began after the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old Black teenager killed by white police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. The Post found that police shooting data reported to the FBI was significantly undercounted, capturing less than half of all fatal incidents. In response, the Post began independently documenting every fatal shooting by on-duty police officers starting January 1, 2015, recording data such as the victim’s race, whether they were armed, and if they were experiencing a mental health crisis at the time they were shot. Since 2022, the project has expanded to include the police agencies involved in each shooting and their federal identifying codes, which allows for a more detailed look at accountability at the department level. Fatal Force focuses on shootings in which an officer kills a civilian in the line of duty, reflecting circumstances that are similar to those in Michael Brown’s case. The project offers an annual comparative analysis, such as how the 2024 statistics compare with previous years.
Presentation and Readability
The project uses a range of statistical and interactive data visualizations to show patterns in police shootings. With an interactive timeline, users can explore annual trends and filter incidents by factors such as the month of a shooting, race, age, and specific circumstances. Pie charts, bar graphs, and comparative analyses add clarity to patterns, including the finding that most police shooting victims in 2024 were between the ages of 20 and 40. The data is visualized in accessible, interactive formats, allowing readers to filter by specific demographics, timelines, and states, while a clean, color-coded design helps in distinguishing information quickly.
Clarity and Understanding of Information Presented
The data in Fatal Force is organized with clear labels and a straightforward layout, making the visuals accessible and impactful. Each entry includes detailed information about the victim—name, age, race, date of shooting, and the involved police department—adding a humanizing and sobering element to the statistics. The structure of the project balances readability with depth, offering an approachable and thorough look into police violence data. Readers can explore broad trends or dive into more specific details, making Fatal Force a powerful resource for understanding patterns in police shootings in the United States since 2015.
Media Matters for America’s “The long history of ugly right-wing media attacks against VP Harris“
By, Jack Winstanley & Payton Armstrong
Published July 11, 2024
Elements Used
A recent story from Media Matters for America examines how conservative media outlets discuss Vice President Kamala Harris in racist and sexist terms, often framing her as being unqualified for the office she holds or to be elected president. Media Matters explores the frequency and tone of these discussions, particularly how conservative networks emphasize her background and public statements to undermine her qualifications for office and negatively critique her stance on gender and racial justice matters. The story uses six, blue, color-coded sections and timelines aligned with key events like a 2024 “hypothetical Harris run,” Harris as “DEI hire,” racist attacks claiming Harris “is not even Black,” and claims about Harris’ past relationships and that she “launched her political career in [the] bedroom” with detailed examples under each section of anti-Harris media framing in conservative media. Each example contains a hyper-link to the news story where Harris was disparaged. Each color-coded section of the article captures the tone of coverage, showing an overwhelming focus on critical or negative media framing and anti-Black or anti-female coverage. The way each section is divided track shifts in coverage from neutral to negative as Harris took office, providing readers with an at-a-glance understanding of conservative media’s focus on race, gender, and justice issues when discussing Harris.
Presentation and Readability
The color-coded sections are very organized and allows users to filter data by section and topic. Also, within each section, the reader can easily explore and link to coverage across conservative media outlets like Fox News, Newsmax, The Wall Street Journal, and other conservative platforms. However, data visualization in this article was threadbare, unattractive, and uninteresting. While the sections and the article were very easy to read and comprehend, the article would have been greatly improved with the use of an interactive timeline showing media framing about Harris in conservative media since she was first elected to office to today, maps showing how conservative media portrays Harris in red states and blues states and the impact on potential voters or even on anti-Black police violence; bar charts to show, and even line graphs or pie charts to show offer readers a breakdown of recurring topics, such as criticisms of Harris’s stance on policing or her comments about structural racism. Any of the above would have contributed to a user-friendly and better understanding of how and why conservative media frames news stories about Vice President Harris and how these stories impact the electorate.
Clarity and Understanding of Information Presented
Media Matters presents the data clearly, with labeling and accessible, color-coded sections that make the article very easy to read. Each section includes brief explanation and context, ensuring that readers understand not only what they are about to read, but also its relevance to Harris’s portrayal in conservative media. By breaking down the data by section and topic, the reporting helps readers grasp the recurring narratives and biases, making the sections accessible and impactful, although very boring.
GreenCLT: Environmental Racism & Urban Sprawl
Research and Story By, Shelby Dains, June 25, 2024
The Elements
The GreenCLT story on “Environmental Racism & Urban Sprawl” is an excellent examination of how urban expansion in Charlotte, North Carolina has affected environmental health, particularly in Black neighborhoods. The news article uses various data visualizations, including population growth graphs, interactive maps of Charlotte’s expansion, and historical redlining maps, to demonstrate the correlation between urban sprawl, pollution, and environmental racism. Each visualization illustrates key changes, such as the increase in Charlotte’s population and landmass since the 1950s and the persistent effects of redlining on Black communities’ access to green spaces. These elements provide readers with a clear, chronological view of how Charlotte’s urbanization has led to a decrease in accessible green space and worsening health disparities for its Black residents.
Presentation and Readability
The presentation of these visual elements is informative and very user-friendly, with labeled maps that allow users to track specific historical events and population changes over time. For example, the redlining map, sourced from the 1935 Home Owners’ Loan Corporation survey, uses color coding to differentiate between “high-risk” Black neighborhoods and “low-risk” white neighborhoods, making it easy for readers to understand how racial discrimination shaped Charlotte’s environmental and housing policies. The color-coding also helps show the environmental consequences of urban sprawl, with predominantly Black neighborhoods more likely to be located near industrial pollution which means Blacks then face higher pollution levels. This historical context provides a foundation for understanding present-day health risks and the disparities in pollution exposure and green space access between Blacks and whites.
Clarity and Understanding of Information Presented
The visuals are informative and the maps and charts provide an excellent historical and geographical overview. However, the article would have been even better with additional interactive features like clickable maps or real-time health data graphs, to further show the impact of environmental racism on current health outcomes in Black neighborhoods. Nonetheless, GreenCLT provides a clear, engaging narrative that underscores the long-term impacts of environmental racism in Charlotte, making the data easy to interpret and contextualize within broader social and environmental justice issues.
Leave a Reply