Data Visualization — A tool to understand scandals
We as citizens, are busy trying to figure out our own business and it is difficult to everyday follow the news and be 100% aware of what is happening out there. You can run into crazy news websites overreacting over a topic and announcing the apocalypse or basically inventing stories with sources no one can verify. News can be misleading and have the power of changing the social mood. But, what can we do to be objective? How can we get rid of the subjective opinion of the medium where you are getting the information from? Typically, we choose the medium or channel that is compatible with our mindset, but still we are missing some angles.
The MIT Media Lab created a tool called Immersion a data visualization tool that helps people visualize and understand the networks they weave through email interactions. So, they decided to launch a website to give people the opportunity to visualize the networks inside the Hillary Clinton's leaked emails. They also provide links to the email contents - you can read them, if you are bored.
The MIT Professor Cesar A. Hidalgo leader of the project, explained in a Medium article after being attacked by a lot of people for launching the website :
“Clinton’s emails are not relevant because they expose an alleged circle of corruption, or wrongdoing, as many conservatives claim. The reason why Clinton’s emails are a big deal is because a person in charge of security should not be using an insecure channel, and those who argue from that perspective have a valid point.”
He also, explained that his goal was to provide people with tools to understand the information that is available but “difficult to digest”, so that they can judge by themselves and forge their own point of view.
The overreaction of those who disapproved what Dr. Cesar Hidalgo did, struck me: people is clearly losing their focus. Having such an antagonist character as Trump, people often forget that he is just a symptom a of broken system (the modern representative democracy). It is easy to look at Hillary as an ally with Trump being the other option, but… is she??
The access to technology, information, citizen engagement, and transparency are the only tools we have as citizens to reshape the system. We need to embrace them, celebrate them, cherish them and defend them as our ultimate right.
Let’s thank the MIT Media Lab.