Data Visualization website
Nash Cunningham, Kate
Ever wonder what really happens with your city taxes? Are they used efficiently and fairly?
For years — both as a newspaper reporter covering local government and as a private citizen — I wondered the same thing. How could I know just where my cash was headed? Was anyone keeping track? And what about spending by the state and federal government?
Of course there are paper trails of such spending. As a reporter, I spent many a day following and reporting on them. But the trail often involved reams and reams of paper. And piecing it together was time consuming and messy. What I could have used were some digital tools to help.
Thanks to movements to make information such as city and state spending publicly available, and to technology that makes such information easy to use, anyone with some basic coding and data knowledge can analyze, interpret and display data.
As part of my final project for my master’s degree in digital journalism and design at the University of South Florida Saint Petersburg, I’ve created a few examples of what you can do with one dataset related to city government spending. These are some of the most basic approaches, and are by no means the only kind of things you can do with data. I’ve included tutorials about what I did, and links to other ideas you can try on your own. With a little practice, you too, could create visualizations about the topics that interest you most.
Applied Research Project submitted for completion of M.A. in Digital Journalism and Design, University of South Florida St. Petersburg, May 1, 2014. Project advisor: Casey Frechette
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