Data Stories 021 | Can visualization save the world? With Kim Rees and Jake Porway
Hi all,
We have two fantastic guests to talk about using visualization for the good. We actually decided to make it even bigger and provokingly titled it: can visualization save the world?
We have on stage: Kim Rees co-founder of Periscopic, a data visualization company guided by the motto: “do good with data,” and Jake Porway, founder of Data Kind, an organization that brings together data scientists and social organizations.
We discuss the challenges of working in this world of big data opportunities and the risks and potentially negative implications of using big data.
Chapters
00:00:00 Intro, welcome to our guests Kim Rees (Periscopic) and Jake Porway (Datakind)
00:01:39 Can data visualization save the world?
00:04:44 Periscopic
00:05:38 Jake & Datakind
00:09:32 Visualization as a process
00:15:17 How do you pick projects to work on?
00:18:01 Periscopic’s U.S. gun deaths visualization
00:30:08 Awareness alone does not help – how you get people to action?
00:32:57 On process
00:40:12 Multiple truths in same data
00:42:53 Responsible authorship
00:45:19 Parallels between data visualization and “photo journalism”?
00:46:12 Responsible data and visualization authorship ctd.
00:50:03 Project votesmart
00:51:39 NYT graphics jobs report
00:53:15 Success stories?
01:05:33 Refuse to work for potentially unethic clients?
01:08:28 “The dark side of datakind”
01:09:06 Back to original question 
01:13:18 Concerns in visualizing personal stories
01:24:59 Wrapping it up
Links
- Periscopic’s Gun Murders Visualization
- Jake’s article: “You Can’t Just Hack Your Way to Social Change”
- Jer Thorp’s Visualization as Process Article
- Book: Raw Data Is An Oxymoron
- The Stop, Question and Frisk Data
- Biases in creating data
- Project Votesmart
- NYT vis of job market interpretation
- Map of gun owners