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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.
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CAMD
What if we could take a raw dataset and harness AI to generate a portrait of the data? The Visual Metaphor Machine project is an initiative that aims to redefine the boundaries of data exploration and visualization.
Communication Studies
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.
Journalism
This research project seeks to design software tools for journalists covering climate change in order to address gaps and needs. The study involves interviews with professional U.S. and international climate journalists.
Journalism
Amid mass spread of climate misinformation and disinformation on social media platforms, climate journalists attempt to disseminate accurate climate change information via social media.
Journalism
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.
Associate Professor, Director of AI-Media Strategies Lab (AIMS)
j.wihbey@northeastern.edu
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]
