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Data Vis Dispatch
June 22nd, 2021

Data Vis Dispatch, June 22

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

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Rose Mintzer-Sweeney
Lisa Charlotte Muth
Lisa Charlotte Muth

Welcome to the very first edition of the Data Vis Dispatch! Starting today, we will publish a collection of the best small and large data visualizations (that we find) every week, especially — but not exclusively — from news organizations. We do so to celebrate data journalism, data visualization, simple charts, and elaborate maps. And we also do it to applaud their creators for putting in the extra effort to make their visualizations understandable, truthful, and beautiful.

Recurring themes in this week’s charts and maps include the Euro Cup, ranked-choice voting, extreme weather, and (of course) the changing phases of the pandemic. Let’s get started!

It wouldn’t be 2021 without a few COVID charts to start us off. The first two show cases shifting from the old to the young in both Argentina and Brazil:

La Nación: La segunda ola afecta a personas más jóvenes y eso, aunque no parezca, es una buena noticia, June 20
Folha de S.Paulo: Mortes por Covid passam a atingir mais a faixa dos 50 anos e cidades pequenas, June 19

And lockdowns are ending all over the world even as new variants spread and pandemic-era service cuts continue:

El Mundo: La desescalada que alumbró la Nueva Normalidad, June 21 (Tweet)
The Economist: The delta variant is the most dangerous SARS-CoV-2 mutation yet, June 16
Financial Times: Delta variant begins to spread, threatening EU’s Covid progress, June 20
Bloomberg: Pandemic Cuts to Public Transit Persist in Major U.S. Cities, June 17

The Euro Cup is providing some lighter food for thought:

The Financial Times: Auld Enemy clash pulls thousands of Scotland fans to London, June 17
El País: Crónica visual: España gana presencia en ataque pero sigue sin puntería, June 20

As New York City heads to the polls for its first elections using ranked-choice voting, these charts explain the process in theory and practice:

The Washington Post: How ranked-choice voting could change the way democracy works, June 21
The Financial Times: ‘He knows policing in and out’: the law-and-order candidate for New York mayor, June 18 (Tweet)

And plenty of other elections and political news were in the mix as well:

El País: ¿Qué han votado sus vecinos? El mapa detallado de las elecciones, calle a calle, en todo México, June 19
Bloomberg: Sweden Sinks Into Political Chaos as PM Ousted in Key Vote, June 20
Bloomberg: Republicans Fall Short in Voting-Rights Crackdown While Adding Hassle at Polls, June 17
Washington Post: State abortion policies have become more extreme — without Roe v. Wade, the divide could widen, June 18
Bloomberg: A Far-Flung Taiwan Island Risks Triggering a U.S.-China Clash, June 16

We saw big-picture trends in everything from motherhood to crypto-mining to multiparty democracy:

The New York Times: Why American Women Everywhere Are Delaying Motherhood, June 16
The Economist: Crypto-miners are probably to blame for the graphics-chip shortage, June 19
FiveThirtyEight: Why The Two-Party System Is Effing Up U.S. Democracy, June 16

And finally, a heat wave in North America and tornados far from their usual territory:

The Washington Post: How a heat dome is pushing extreme temperatures to new heights in the West, June 18
USA Today: ‘Tornado Alley’ is expanding: Southern states see more twisters now than ever before, June 17

What else we found interesting

The New York Times: Tracking Covid-19 From Hundreds of Sources, One Extracted Record at a Time, June 17
The Guardian: What tree rings reveal about America’s megadrought, June 17
Alasdair Rae: “I have now figured out how to create a very simple population density profile line in QGIS”, June 21
FiveThirtyEight: Why People Fall For Conspiracy Theories, June 15

If you want to get inspired by more data visualizations: In the past week, the winners of both the Malofiej Awards and the Sigma Awards were announced.

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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Rose Mintzer-Sweeney
(she/her, @rosemintzers) is a data vis writer on Datawrapper's communications team. She likes words, numbers, pictures, and all possible combinations of the same. Rose lives in Berlin.
Lisa Charlotte Muth
Lisa Charlotte Muth
(she/her, @lisacmuth, @lisacmuth@vis.social) is Datawrapper’s head of communications. She writes about best practices in data visualization and thinks of new ways to excite you about charts and maps. Lisa lives in Berlin.

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