The network map of Canadian media ownership was one of two pieces I was working on for the CBCNews.ca feature package on the future of television. I built it with IBM’s free data visualization tool Many Eyes.
I’m generally pleased with how it turned out, but I think the presentation could be much clearer. I felt the need to make a screencast using Jing to show how to use it.
Newslab.ca contacted me for an email interview about the network map, and I think it addresses some of the concerns I have about the tool. One part of the email I sent that they didn’t use addresses one aspect of the lack of clarity in the map.
The Many Eyes network map was intended for personal relationships, like a Twitter network showing who’s following who, or computer networks showing connections, where there’s no hierarchy.
In the case of the Canadian media map, there’s a clear hierarchy, so it would have been nice to see, for example, parent companies at the top of each cluster, or as a larger node, or in bold, or in bigger text, something to show that these are the companies that own everything “below” them.
If the point of a visualization is to tell a story, the story of the companies at the top of the food chain is one this map doesn’t tell clearly.
Oh, and the other part of Changing Channels I did was this article on Canadian over-the-air digital TV. It turned out well and it’s very pretty well received in the comments.