InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy / public awareness / NGOs / social change

[Deborah Taylor-Pearce]

Yuri,

> I'd love to hear it if
> someone knows of other
> resources concerning
> graphics (information
> visualization) for public
> awareness / social change
> / NGOs.

I noticed that Emerson's booklet (very nicely done, indeed!)
included worldmapper.org graphics, and I have a few more cites
for you along this line.

E.g., the U.S. activist group SisterSong (which advocates
"reproductive justice" and describes itself as "bridging the race
and class divide in the pro-choice movement") uses graphics from

MappingOurRights.org
http://www.ipas.org/mapping/final_map.asp

for their work.


Other mapping projects used by U.S. activists include:

The UC Atlas of Global Inequality
http://ucatlas.ucsc.edu/home.html

The Poverty Mapping website
http://www.povertymap.net/

The Exploration Company
http://www.theexplorationcompany.com/

Re. The Exploration Company: I found out about their "The Wide
Ranging World Map" from an article in the magazine, _The
Progressive_ (Sept. 2002 issue), where it was advertised as:

	"... said by its makers to be the first and only
	environmental wall map of the world. The map not only
	displays all countries, active border disputes, and key
	cities, but it also notes cultural regions, prominent
	indigenous nations, and population densities. And there
	are facts about level of marine pollution, radioactive
	contamination, and destroyed rainforests.

	"'If conventional political maps are the story of
	government, the Wide Ranging World Map is the story of
	the people and the Earth,' said Daniel Rirdan, director
	of the Exploration Company and producer of the map. 'By
	sheer inclusion of these features on a map, they acquire
	a reality in people's eyes.'"

For some reason, when I visited their site just now, I couldn't
get their catalog to come up, or for that matter, anything about
their "The Wide Ranging World Map," hence the quote from _The
Progressive_.


One final mapping reference from the advocacy category: one of my
favorite little books, which I know I've mentioned here before,
_Boundaries of Home: Mapping for Local Empowerment_, ed. by Doug
Aberley (Gabriola Island, B.C. and Philadelphia, PA: New Society
Publishers, 1993). It's not anywhere near as slick a publication
as what's been mentioned thus far, but it documents several
creative uses of information design (for self-education) by
activists learning how to revision themselves and their
communities from a bottom-up, bioregional perspective.


Deborah
_____

Deborah Taylor-Pearce
dtp at she-philosopher.com