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Data Vis Dispatch
January 9th, 2024

Data Vis Dispatch, January 9

The best of last week’s big and small data visualizations

Photo of Vivien Serve
Vivien Serve

Welcome to a new year of Data Vis Dispatches. We are back with the 124th edition of Data Vis Dispatch! Every week, we’ll be publishing a collection of the best small and large data visualizations we find, especially from news organizations — to celebrate data journalism, data visualization, simple charts, elaborate maps, and their creators.

Recurring topics this week include the Alaska and Japan Airlines crashes, elections around the world, and rich people.

After a crash, an Japan Airlines plane burns on the runway at Haneda Airport in Tokyo, Japan, on January 2:

The Wall Street Journal: All Passengers on Japan Airlines Jet Evacuated After Plane Collision, January 4
Nikkei Asia: JAL機炎上、そのとき何が検証・羽田空港衝突事故, January 9

But that’s not all that’s happened on flights this year. An Alaska Airlines flight lost a panel in flight, leaving passengers exposed to a gaping hole in the side of the plane. This affects the Boeing line:

The Wall Street Journal: Alaska Airlines Boeing Probe: What We Know, January 9
Bloomberg: Boeing Slumps After Panel Blowout Leads to Partial 737 Grounding, January 8

Several visualizations show the current state of the Russian-Ukrainian war. The Ukrainian Pentagon is running out of money, but numbers show Russia’s loss of occupied land in Ukraine over the last few months:

The Wall Street Journal: Pentagon’s Ukraine Coffers Run Dry, Threatening Kyiv’s Grip on Its Territory, January 7
Le Monde: Guerre en Ukraine : sur un front quasi figé en 2023, les maigres gains territoriaux de Kiev sont grignotés ailleurs par la Russie, January 9

This week we found 2 visualizations about rich people. Apparently a small island off the coast of Miami is inhabited by billionaires and it’s hard to imagine their wealth:

Bloomberg: Just a Billion Doesn’t Cut It on This Exclusive Florida Island, January 4
The Washington Post: Are you rich?, January 5

Elections are a big issue this year for more than half of the world’s population that is eligible to vote. More than 4.1 billion people live in countries that will vote in 2024:

Le Figaro: 2024, le monde aux urnes, January 7
Le Monde: 2024, année électorale record, January 6
天下, 雜誌: 神明與選鷗, 他們為什麼瘋狂拜廟?, January 5

From the legislative to the judicial:

The New York Times: The Jan. 6 Riot Inquiry So Far: Three Years, Hundreds of Prison Sentences, January 3
WeVis: The Constitutional Court Cases Unveiled, January 5

In the world of climate visualization, not all news are bad this week:

Financial Times: Ice cover in North America’s Great Lakes hits lowest level for 50 years, January 5
Bloomberg: ¿Podrán un lago y nubes artificiales salvar al canal de Panamá?, January 3
Financial Times: Britain turns to floating turbines to tap into ‘remarkable’ wind speeds, January 3

Other important news from around the world: a terrible earthquake hit Japan the beginning of this year, and aftershocks continued to shake the island for days:

The New York Times: Map: Earthquake Strikes Japan, January 2
Vijdan Mohammad Kawoosa: “Hundreds of aftershocks occurred in Japan since a powerful earthquake struck it on Monday. Some of these expected aftershocks caused strong ground shaking in areas that were already affected by the first quake. My work for @ReutersGraphics,” January 2 (Tweet)

Let’s finish with some news from Spain: we found maps on inland migration for work, and El País took a closer look at femicide in Spain and analyzed the perpetrators.

elDiario.es: Fuga de cerebros en la España vaciada: cómo Madrid absorbe el talento joven del resto de comunidades, January 7
El País: 24 horas de terror machista, January 7

Did we say finish? It wouldn’t be a complete first show of the year without our miscellaneous section. Today we have a real estate scandal in Poland and historic moon landings:

Gazeta Wyborcza: Krajowy Zasób Nieruchomości. Założono kilkadziesiąt spółek, powstał jeden blok, January 8
The Wall Street Journal: Vulcan Rocket Finally Launches, but Moon Lander Runs Into Trouble, January 8

What else we found interesting

Le Figaro: 3D printing: the worrying trend of “homemade” firearms, January 4
Tracking AI: TRACKING AI, Monitoring Bias in Artificial Intelligence Chatbots, January 8
The Perfect Webpage, January 8

Help us make this dispatch better! We’d love to hear which newsletters, blogs, or social media accounts we need to follow to learn about interesting projects, especially from less-covered parts of the world (Asia, South America, Africa). Write us at hello@datawrapper.de or leave a comment below.

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Photo of Vivien Serve
Vivien Serve
(she/her) is a working student on Datawrapper’s Communications team. She creates the Data Vis Dispatch to keep data visualization enthusiasts up to date on exciting new projects. When she’s not working, she studies interface design, and when she’s not studying, she’s planning a festival stage or soldering light installations. Vivien lives in Potsdam.

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