What are links and right actually for? I have this visualization with the London designer Stefanie Posavec in 2008 to try to understand political perspectives. I had a vague feeling, but no real detail. No sense of cartography. So I by the Encyclopædia Britannica roved, cross references with Wikipedia and deepened over websites like conservative resource.com shape up, and create a fluid concept map for these two blocks.
The political spectrum is of course not so polarized. Actually it is apparently a diamond shape. But that's how it especially in the media – left wing vs right-wing labour vs conservative, Democrat vs. Republican shows. And perhaps in our heads...
The image was published in my book information is beautiful in Feb 2009 and was immediately right bloggers set to. They drubbed it for his left-wing bias. I thought fair play. You have some good points. As a left-wing journalist type I had clearly - and unconsciously - the chart links seem better than biased to the right.
So I got to tedious (and sometimes heated) discussion with my right wing critics. In their feedback and no small amount of data fireballs in the comments - I updated the image refine the wording and change a few other subtle elements for a hopefully more balanced end result.
(If you're curious, you can see the original pictures on my Flickr)
But remember: this is an attempt to represent the idealized versions of the political spectrum. It is as if I am routes dense, such as a piece of rubber, so that the information and forms are exaggerated. The reality is subtle and diverse - a shape I hope in a future release.
I love this diagram. Not only because it is a very rarified form of data - is we constructed the concepts and ideas can make our world views. So it literally to act can as lens * see * what others think.
But also perhaps, it on the potential of information visualization shows. That is, seeing ideas allows us to keep seemingly conflicting value systems at the same time in our minds. In the current language, f * k with our minds.
If you like this picture, can be ordered from a nice A2 print on beautiful FSC-certified Munken art paper here.
I do InformationIsBeautiful.net, visualization dedicated information, ideas, stories and data. Twitter @ infobeautiful
This is a new and updated image from my book infographic Exploria, information is beautiful. (HarperCollins 2009). In the United States called the book the Visual Miscellaneum
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