The Co-Laboratory for Data Impact focuses on narrative data strategies and is committed to advancing civic-oriented and impactful visual storytelling for issues of public urgency in the areas of diversity, transparency, and sustainability. The lab serves as a university hub for faculty, staff, and students looking to communicate visually with data in the public sphere and for external partners of various kinds seeking expertise in this domain. Through creative practice and research, the lab contributes to the fields of design and data journalism, exploring areas such as visual poetics, metaphors, and evidentiary aesthetics. We aim to expand the vocabulary of public data storytelling by using the wellspring of a broad range of approaches: journalistic, design-centric, and artistic. We aim at facilitating sense-making around digital information, while providing the tools for public audiences to understand the world in new impactful ways. We value quantitative rigor and data integrity while risking innovative, poetic and metaphoric data portrayals.
Faculty
Current Students
Ray Christian Cristobal
Journalism Research Assistant at the Co-Lab for Data Impact
[email protected]
Current Students’ Profiles
- Ray Christian Cristobal, College of Arts, Media and Design
- Zhaozhou Dai, College of Arts, Media and Design
- Emma Klekotka, College of Arts, Media and Design & Khoury College of Computer Sciences
- Annetta Stogniew, College of Arts, Media and Design & Khoury College of Computer Sciences
Former Students
- Amanda Brea, College of Arts, Media and Design & D’Amore-McKim School of Business
- Sofia Perez Aria, School of Journalism
- Dina Zemlyanker, Khoury College of Computer Sciences
- Corey Docker, Khoury College of Computer Sciences
- Kathleen Chesnutt, School of Journalism
- Claudia Stedt, College of Science
- Gabriela Horenstein, D’Amore-McKim School of Business
- Danica Jefferies, School of Journalism
- Armin Akhavan, College of Arts, Media, and Design, IDDV Program
- Sarah Campbell, College of Arts, Media, and Design, IDDV Program
- Yuan Hua, College of Arts, Media, and Design, IDDV Program
- Gibby, Khoury College of Computer Sciences
- Szu Yu Chen, Northeastern University’s School of Journalism
- Laura South, Khoury College of Computer Sciences PhD
- Alex Lim, Khoury College of Computer Sciences
- Anna Campbell, Media Innovation Program
- Lauren Vitacco, College of Arts, Media, and Design
- Nicholas Miklaucic, Khoury College of Computer Sciences
- Sam Chuan, College of Arts, Media and Design
- Leah Welch, College of Arts, Media, and Design
- Taylor Blackley, College of Arts, Media, and Design
- Yushu Tian, Northeastern University’s School of Journalism
- Daniela Rincon Reyes, Northeastern University’s School of Journalism
Projects
Current Projects:
Addressing Science-related Misinformation: Exploring Cross-Cultural Differences and NGO Responses
Abstract by Ray Christian Cristobal: The key focus of the research is the relationship between vaccine hesitancy and climate change denial because of misinformation, specifically on how it is perceived because of social media. Several works of literature...
Software Tools to Support Climate Change Reporting: Addressing Gaps and Needs among Journalists
Abstract by Zhaozhou Dai: Melting glaciers and rising sea levels, birds’ changing migratory patterns, and increasing temperatures have made it obvious that climate change is affecting all aspects of people’s lives. This research project seeks to design...
Climate Journalism and Social Media: Analyzing Practices on Twitter
Annetta Stogniew Abstract Amid mass spread of climate misinformation and disinformation on social media platforms, climate journalists attempt to disseminate accurate climate change information via social media. But when social media algorithms uplift shocking and sometimes untrue content,...
User Engagement with Climate Activism on TikTok
Abstract by Emma Klekotka: In recent years, the social media platform TikTok has become a stage for activism, especially among young adults. However, research is relatively limited on the subject, especially content relating to climate activism. Messaging of...
Previous Projects (Fall 2019-2020):
- Diversity Explorer: Boston, Households, Entropy (in beta), which examines racial and linguistic variation across households in Boston, using Census microdata, and visualizes the data using metaphor;
- The 2020 Election Tracker (ongoing), which is part of the Storybench.org project’s efforts to provide novel insights on the U.S. election by analyzing news coverage and social media data. As part of this, the Co-Lab has been helping colleagues with the DebateVis project, run by the Northeastern InterVis Lab;
- The Fabric of Online Speech project (planning stage), which is leveraging social media data from Twitter, Reddit and Facebook to visualize contentious communications in digital space;
- Climate Narrative Explorer (in beta), which is building tools to analyze climate change coverage in more sophisticated ways, using sentiment analysis and examining narrative arcs in stories.
- The Computation + Journalism Symposium 2020, which is being hosted on March 20-21 at Northeastern University and which the Data Impact Co-Lab is helping to organize.
Remembrance of Climate Futures
Remembrance of Climate Futures is a public art installation that disseminates climate change data to a network of communities through a series of site-specific ‘historic’ plaques.
Diversity Traces
An interactive lens on multi-racial families in the United States · 1860-2020. This visualization project comes as a celebration of the fringe couples and families who have a multi-racial identity, effectively embodying the intermingling of races, and dissolving the systemic barriers...
Embodying Information
Data is a tool for analysis and interpretation. We challenge this with invitations to embody data-driven stories through dance and theatre. These new modes of representation can empower individuals and communities.
Data Against Feminicide
Gender-related violence against women is a global problem. We are supporting activists collecting data about these killings by collaboratively designing technologies that can help them automate some of this work.
1,659
1,659 is a data sculpture about food security in Massachusetts during the height of the pandemic. It is showing at multiple sites across the Boston area during the summer and fall of 2021.
dustzone
Staubmarke is a public space installation in Stuttgart – a city affected by airborne particulate matter pollution. Controversies between public health advocates, the city, and the local industry often manifest in disputes about proper methods of measurement and the veracity...
Simulated Dendrochronology of U.S. Immigration 1790-2016
Nature has its own ways of organizing information: organisms grow and register information from the environment. This is particularly notable in trees, which, through their rings, tell the story of their growth. Drawing on this phenomenon as a visual metaphor,...
Art of the March
Art of the March is an online archive and interactive presentation of protest signs and posters collected in the aftermath of the historic Boston Women’s March on January 21, 2017. This website contains digital images of over 6000 signs placed...
Mapping Media and Politics
Using social media and news coverage datasets, this cluster of projects explores and maps sentiment of political messaging on Twitter; the magnitude and longevity of political advertisements on Facebook; and the foci and gaps in media coverage surrounding issues like...
Maps of Daesh
The ongoing Syrian civil war raises new cartographic challenges, including the ethical question of how the self-proclaimed Islamic State should be represented. States and news organizations face a conundrum: by mapping IS territory, they implicitly acknowledge its statehood. This project...
The State Financial Disclosure Project
While national debate in the United States continues over financial disclosure practices for federal officials, personal financial disclosure for state and local officials remains an under-studied area also in need of more sunlight and scrutiny. This research project scores each...
Publications
Cruz, P., Wihbey, J., Ghael, A., Costa, S., Chao, R., and Shibuya, F. 2018. “Process of simulating tree rings for immigration in the U.S.” In IEEE VIS Arts Program Annotated Projects. Berlin, Germany.
Cruz, P., Wihbey, J. 2018. “200 Years of U.S. Immigration Looks Like the Rings of a Tree.” National Geographic. [online]
Howe, J., Bajak, A., Kraft, D., and Wihbey, J. 2017. “Collaborative, Open, Mobile: A Thematic Exploration of Best Practices at the Forefront of Digital Journalism.” Storybench. [working paper, download]
Wihbey, J., Beaudet, M., and Cruz, P. 2017. “There are huge holes in how the U.S. states investigate politicians’ conflicts of interest.” Washington Post/Monkey Cage. [online]
De la Torre-Arenas, I. and Cruz, P. 2017. “A taxonomy of motion applications in data visualization.” In Proceedings of Expressive’17 – The joint symposium on Computational Aesthetics and Sketch Based Interfaces and Modeling and Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering, Los Angeles, article 7. [ACM]
Wihbey, J. and Beaudet, M. 2017. “State-level Policies for Personal Financial Disclosure: Exploring the Potential for Public Knowledge on Conflict-of-Interest Issues.” In Proceedings of Law & Policy Division, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Conference. [AEJMC]
Offenhuber, D.. 2017. Waste Is Information — Infrastructure Legibility and Governance. Cambridge: MIT Press [link]
Offenhuber, D. 2017. “Maps of Daesh – the Cartographic Warfare Surrounding Insurgent Statehood.” GeoHumanities. [pdf][link]
Sam, A. and Offenhuber, D. 2017. “Auditive Space – Its Limitations and Its Materiality.” GAM. Architecture Magazine, no. 13. [pdf]
Offenhuber, D. 2017. “Sticky data – context and friction in the use of urban data proxies.” In Data and the City. ed. Rob Kitchin, Tracey P. Lauriault, and Gavin McArdlel. New York: Routledge. [pdf]
Wihbey, J. and Beaudet, M. 2016. “Transparency, Corruption, and the Information Needs of Communities: The Case of Personal Financial Disclosure”. Northeastern University School of Law Research Paper No. 278-2016. [SSRN]
Offenhuber, D. 2016. “Urban Entropy.” In What Urban Media Art Can Do: Why When Where and How?, edited by Susa Pop, Tanya Toft, Nerea Calvillo, and Mark Wright. S.l.: Av Edition Gmbh.
Offenhuber, D. 2016. “The Transactionalization of Infrastructure as a Case for Accountability-Oriented Design”. Design and the City Conference, Amsterdam. [pdf]