10 Data Visualisations of Major News Events

Big things are happening every day – the last few years have seen major global events that impact across nations. Wars, changes of government, cultural upheaval and the evolving nature of humanity all vie for our attention and consideration.

So, some may scoff at entertainment stories that dare to break into the news headlines; after all, they are not really in the same league as political machinations. Others may prefer a healthy dose of tech news to manifest itself on the front pages, rather than the latest footballers’ misdemeanours or the diets of a scantily-clad, pneumatic d-list celebrity.

Whatever our own views, we are ultimately subject to the provider’s editorial control.

Where all news agencies seem to agree, however, is that when a story breaks its longevity and coverage depends on voracious public interest forcing it to spiral into an ever increasing torrent of related, re-spun and re-visualised content.

Each event has with it a mass of data that can be best displayed visually for easy and attractive comprehension. The following visualisations tell fascinating tales of major news events from recent times.

Michael Jackson’s Life in Pop
The King of Pop passed away two and a half years ago and while his fans still mourn his untimely death, his passing continues to make headlines due to the trial of Dr Conrad Murray. The ‘Life in Pop’ visualisation is interactive and covers the major points in the star’s life from birth to death, from hit to hit.

(Click on the images for larger versions)

Source

When the news broke on June 25th 2009 of Jackson’s death, the Internet traffic went wild with people desperate to know more. This next visualisation is a beautiful video of the traffic experienced by the New York Times website.

Between 1830 and 1890, Rumsey Maps printed this amazing French visualisation that intended to lay out all of the world’s most important historical events from the Bible to modern day. It’s a staggeringly impressive piece of work.

Endless debate has ensued over the causes of the riots that occurred over 4 successive nights in August. Trying to piece together all the events and incidences of damage, injury and death is difficult and painfully recent but this impressive interactive scrolling timeline is an absolute mine of information.

This annual cycling endurance race celebrated its 97th anniversary last year. Trying to keep track of all the teams’ competitors would make even an avid race fan wince but this next visualisation does an admirable job of displaying the origins of each team member and the route itself. There is so much more to it than the image detail below.

A popular uprising saw the end of Mubarak’s presidency. Through a period that reportedly claimed the lives 335 people over the course of 18 days, Mohamed Nanabhay and Al Jazeera used the chartbeat real-time analytics site to produce a detailed timeline for the revolution. Viewing the full image is highly recommended.

Trying to organise a democratic voting process where the electorate would be free from intimidation and the boxes wouldn’t be tampered with was always going to be a matter of contention.

Polling locations were reduced by 81 from the previous year due to security concerns. This interactive visualisation identifies the changes in numbers of polling locations.

As the old saying goes; the only thing in life that is guaranteed is death and taxes. According to the creator, Jess Bachman, it ‘contains over 500 programs and departments and almost every program that receives over 200 million dollars annually.’ On a more sociological level it also depicts where the President and the powers-that- be decide how this massive Federal fund should be spread among their priorities of the day.

Marcos Weskamp puts it succinctly: ‘Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator’. Themes are linked by a colour palette and the size of each cell is determined by the amount of related articles per news story. The lighter the shade, the more recent the story. The larger the cell, the more content that has been linked to it. For major news events like the Fukushima Earthquake in July 2011, the Newsmap application swelled with interlinked cells.

A History of the World in 100 Seconds

Perhaps one of the most remarkable visualisations is this one created by Gareth Lloyd and Tom Martin. They created a program to examine 30Gb worth of data from Wikipedia, specifically those event entries that possessed global coordinates. They then used these data to ‘flare’ on a world map transparency. As the 100 seconds passes, the visualisation’s flares increase in intensity and intriguingly map out a map of the world.