I’ve started drafting three articles in the last 24 hours for this blog only to find a better one on the same subject written by someone else. Firstly, it’s a regular theme here that data visualisations are a huge opportunity for us all because they allow us to break the monopoly that civil servants, sloppy [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Visualisations’
Using a weblog crowdsource intelligence
I’ve been working with Mick Fealty over at the Northern Ireland political weblog Slugger O’Toole on a bit of an experiment. We decided to try and convene some free consultancy for all of the political parties in Northern Ireland – starting with the ruling (!) bloc, the DUP. As with all political weblogs that host [...]
UK Data website launched
No time to post much here today apart from to point to the new UK government data website – www.data.gov.uk – as described here. There are plenty of data sets that allow you to browse geographical data and find out different information about local schools and other services. There’s also a good section in which [...]
A feast of infographics
As I’ve spent a lot of time recently banging on about visual representations of policy issues, this post on the GOOD website is something of a feast.
If you watch one video this week, make it this one
Further to my previous post on why visualisation of data matters – and what the potential abuses are in the hands of pressure groups. I’ve just seen this video by an American pollster and data visualiser @alexlundry – he covers the deceptive use of visualisations and the way that lobbies use them. He covers the reasons [...]
More data for you
Another day, another step in the right direction. Boris Johnson is opening up around 200 datasets about London along with an offer of from Channel 4′s 4iP fund of up to £200,000 to help developers to create innovative applications that use it. Why is this exciting to anyone with an interest in local democracy? Well, [...]
Illustrating data (again)
It’s Christmas. That means that you have to indulge bloggers in their little obsessions. Mine is an interest in the way that data can be presented in a way that changes our perception of an issue and clarifies a problem. This one, for instance from Good Magazine: You can zoom around and explore it here. [...]
Going to extremes. ‘Whataboutery’: polarisation v ‘the hive mind’
I’ve been reading Cass Sunstein’s ‘Going to Extremes‘ lately – it’s worth a look. Sunstein’s conclusion – that when we are filtered into like-minded groups that we reinforce each other’s prejudices and tend to reach more extreme conclusions than we would if we were on our own – is not a particularly startling one in [...]
Visualising public spending
Further to the occasional series here looking at ways that people are using open data and visualisation tools to help clarify complex issues, here is the ‘where does my money go‘ application: The authors say that it’s not finished yet and you can look at their underlying data – they’re looking for feedback. In terms of the [...]
A blog about representative democracy, social media and a conversational politics. How will peer-to-peer communications change local democracy? How is representation changing? 
