Understanding the World

Curated by

Emma Lacey-Bordeaux
Emma Lacey-Bordeaux is a writer and journalist working for CNN based in Washington D.C. At a moment of unparalleled political turmoil in the United States, she helps to ensure the…
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Blue feed, red feed
Wall Street Journal
Like many people, I reflexively look at my social networks for information in the morning. It's so routine that I don't even think about what information I'm missing due to the bubble effect. This tool is one of the most effective and simple ways to get us thinking outside this paradig
Global threat interactive: What’s the world scared of?
The Guardian
Fear drives so much of human behavior and this tool does a great job contextualizing what's absorbing people's attention around the world. Especially since we know that terrorism, for instance, requires a lot of attention in order to be effective, it raises questions when we see that some of that nations least impacted say by something like ISIS rank that high among their concerns. Why is this?
Census 2016: This is Australia as 100 people
ABC News
Often we need to zoom out to best understand our daily lives. This is a great example of how data correctly visualized helps us to understand things like why American neighborhoods are so racially homogeneous, something that has major implications across our lives.
How your worst fears stack up against reality
ABC News
This is a great little interactive, again getting at an issue of primary importance in our lives: what we fear. And here they're taking the time and the space to inform us about how this plays out psychologically.
Facebook political ad collector
ProPublica
Critical work here. Facebook ads are unregulated in the way most political advertising is but we must understand more about how it works. This goes a long way towards advancing our understanding.
Cuba’s new wave
This is an absolutely beautiful presentation about a country that doesn't get a lot of nuanced treatment. Love it.
Paying the President
ProPublica, Fathom
Since the election of Donald Trump, Americans have learned a lot about constitutional law including dusty ideas like emoluments and how the founders tried to address the problem of a president benefiting financially from the office. This is a clean and vital display of what this kind of concept looks like in practice.
Missy Elliott’s “Supa Dupa Fly”
The New Yorker
Miss Elliott is an amazing artist and this is a perfect interactive essay explaining her cultural significance. Just love it.
2018 Midterms: Live Election Results
The New Yorker
Gender parity in American politics has long been elusive. Things changed when Trump won and women became galvanized to get directly involved in politics in way they hadn't in decades. This article does a great job highlighting this phenomenon.
What happened to all the jobs Trump promised?
ProPublica
Sometimes interactives feel a bit like icing on a cake. Sometimes they feel entirely apart from the narrative. In this case the interactive is absolutely integrated with the narrative. The two wouldn't work together and you wouldn't understand the story half as well without the interactive component. It's also just a clean, simple way to get underneath empty rhetoric. It's more effective than a fact check but it's essentially doing just that.

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