From hip-hop’s anger at Donald Trump to social media vitriol towards women, a sprawl of data visualisations are in the running for next week’s Kantar Information is Beautiful award.
The prizes are split across eight categories, encompassing 117 of the most original approaches to data journalism. In the wake of a tumultuous year of global politics, and at a time when news organisations are continuing to targeted disinformation and the concept of “fake news”, data-based analysis is arguably more important than ever.
“Data takes us to the truth and facts behind everything from asteroids to climate, migration to Trump. And visualisation can give us fresh insight into complex cultural issues like trolling, the gender gap and even how words are used,” said David McCandless, founder of the awards.
We’ve chosen ten visualisations from the shortlist. The Guardian’s ‘Want to fix gun violence in America? Go local’, for example, shows how half of America’s gun homicides in 2015 were clustered in only 127 cities and towns – even though these places contain less than a quarter of the US population.
‘Rhythm of food’, to pick a very different example, uses Google Trends data to show how interest in dishes, ingredients and recipes has shifted over the past few years. FiveThirtyEight’s ‘Hip-hop is Turning on Donald Trump’, meanwhile, charts the mentions of presidential candidates over decades of rap lyrics.
The winners of the Information is Beautiful Prize will be announced on 28 November. More information can be found on Kantar’s website. [gallery:1]
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