View Tanya Notley
Tanya Notley, Tactical Technology Collective
Visualizing information and communicating for social change
If you are a researcher, you don’t need to be a designer. but you do need to think in a visual way. Flip the switch and start thinking visually.
1. Tactical tech terms
A. “info activism” is when rights activists turn information about their issues into action that will address it.
•Tactics: are the approaches that are used to strategically address a goal.
•Tools: media vehicle, what you use to implement your tactics
B. Tooklits and guides
have a methodology, designed in collaboration with many experts
x-in-a-box
C. Bring together rights activists, technologists, designers
2. History of Visualization
key tactic: visualize your message
a. deficit of info-design as a discipline
b. local and cultural specificity of aesthetics and visual information
c. helping artists work with local artistic and tech talent
it adds seeing to reading to make complex data easier to understand.
•two historical examples: snow mapped infection data, convincing officials to shut down a water pump that was creating a localized cholera pandemic.
•slave trade networks visualization.
3. Effective Examples
more recent:
•belfast telegraphic: middle east crisis, who backs an immediate cease-fire. yes: all countries. no: uk, us, israel.
•collected and analyzed child mortality data.
•hrw campaign about uzbekistan inclusion to edu: a city-map style diagram that, instead of highlighting tourist sports, highlights human rights violations. firing squad locations, etc. activists gave copies to delegates as they arrived at the airport. so effective that keynote speaker at summit had to acknowledge human rights violations.
•global witness violation
In sum:
Visualization can show how many, when where. It can visualize trends, compare elements, or reveal patterns. Good info design brings form an structure to information, making it easier to digest etc.
Video examples:
•Tunisian activists geo-tagging human rights violation videos so they show up near Tunisian presidential palace on Google Earth.
•Featured layers on Darfur crisis, on Google Earth. paid for by US holocaust museum. Spreadsheets, photos, videos, etc. They spent six months and Google promoted it.
•Moblile phones anecdote in Madacasgar. Citizen reporting in 2009 on government brutality during protests.Ushadidi is a crowd-sourced reportage platform, people could send emails, SMS, or whatever and it would aggregate other coverage. Gave a much broader view of what was happening in the country.
•Isreal-Lebanon war. Activists created maps of bombing and damaged infrastructure. In addition to awareness, helped facilitate reconstruction later on.
4. Break-out discussions
David: representing many voices on the web
Bellinha+Laurie: digital literacy
Luis: open Software
Sunil: privacy and security
Chris: distribution tools
Leslie: mapping policy
Micah: open data+open government
Rupert: freedom of information
Notes from information visualization break out sessions on Thursday
5.Questions
q: How do you make determinations about who to work with, what to do, what tech etc?
a: We have offices everywhere and a huge network, we just bring in the right people. Determination of who to work with: global consensus, not just serving Western needs. Ask partners: how are you working for rights? etc?