Climate reporter Liz Weil and visual reporter Mauricio Rodríguez Pons first became interested in Thermal, which is just north of California’s Salton Sea, because it is one of the hottest places in America. They soon realized it’s also a prime example of how wealth inequality is inextricably linked to climate justice.
Networks of business interests, government officials, and criminal groups run illegal operations that harm the environment in multiple ways. They drive worldwide illegal trafficking in wildlife and seafood, timber, minerals, hazardous waste, and toxic chemicals. Such environmental crimes are sometimes connected with other criminal activity, such as drug trafficking and money laundering.
Tracking the most popular data journalism stories on Twitter from September 13 to September 19, using NodeXL mapping and our own human curation, we found projects by Reuters and the German newspaper Morgenpost analyzing Merkel’s legacy in numbers. In this edition, we also feature a story looking into North and South Korea’s missile programs, a piece on school segregation in the United States, and more worrying climate change revelations.
Tracking the most popular data journalism stories on Twitter from September 6 to September 13, we found a visual project by the South China Morning Post explaining the global impact of the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil in US history, a Guardian investigation into the history of Canada’s residential schools, and a video project by Le Monde exploring the recent history of forest fires around the world.
Tracking the most popular data journalism stories on Twitter from August 30 to September 5, using NodeXL mapping and our own human curation, we found a series of infographics by Al Jazeera illustrating the scale of the looming crisis. In this edition, we also feature a New York Times investigation into Bitcoin’s energy use, an examination of the Black mortality gap in the United States by The Marshall Project, and a look at the varying successes of the actors who have played James Bond by The Times (UK).
Tracking some of the most popular data journalism stories on Twitter from August 23 to 29, we found a thread by Financial Times journalist John Burn-Murdoch exploring what we know so far about the long-term effects of immunizations, a look into the pandemic’s impact on the global female workforce by The Washington Post, and an investigation into teen pregnancies in Peru by OjoPúblico.
As calls for change grow louder in light of the latest IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report and in the run up to COP26 conference in Glasgow this November, it’s time to focus on how data visualization can help people grasp the challenges that lie ahead.
In March 2020, environmental journalist Helena Carpio, leaned out of her window to see Caracas filled with smoke. Something was burning, but no one knew where and there was no official news on what was happening. She started to investigate, and the resulting project analyzed two decades of satellite data on hotspots to explore the when, where, and why of forest fires in Venezuela and across Latin America.
Our weekly project that maps the most popular data journalism stories on Twitter found several environmental projects this week, including a climate disaster in Germany, air pollution in South Asia, and deforestation in Brazil. We also feature more data-driven coverage of the Tokyo Olympics, an investigation into Bulgarian coal plants, and a guide to creating appealing data visualizations based on simple charts.
How do you increase your readers’ interest in climate stories? Two award-winning projects from the online team at Norway’s NRK offer insight that could help newsrooms increase impact and engagement in climate coverage.
