Election-season data visualization is traditionally cast in the form of public opinion polling data delivered through the red/blue/purple national maps of state and district races. Although that is a useful shortcut to inform the classic horse-race electoral narrative, it leaves us hungry for context. Dividing the U.S. into blue and red states masks important trends and relationships, and the patterns within the binary electoral results remain opaque.

Patchwork Nation

Recognizing the need to look at elections a different way, Patchwork Nation was born four years ago. Created from the inspiration of Dante Chinni and built into a living project in partnership with the PBS NewsHour and the Christian Science Monitor, it focuses on delivering more context while remaining visually intuitive for the reader. The Jefferson Institute is proud to have partnered with Patchwork Nation in their 2010 relaunch, which involved porting them to Drupal, adding a district layer to their already compelling map of U.S. counties, and deepening the delivery of data visualizations for individual counties and districts with the Knight News Challenge sponsored VIDI data visualization toolkit.

The site's new back end is even more exciting. We've moved all the data series that Patchwork Nation uses to Drupal tables and designed an interface for administrators to build, post and embed maps, charts and graphs on the fly. All that visualization work was done in the past by the brilliant and overburdened IT staff of the NewsHour. Now, Chinni or any of his data-savvy colleagues can do it themselves, and the NewsHour's IT staff can focus on more strategic challenges.

Patchwork Nation delivers a rare blend of data and analysis, simultaneously providing local, regional and national specificity. Geographically, it helps viewers understand how their community is similar to and different from their neighbors' and others across the country. It places an emphasis on trend lines over snapshots, providing profiles of the electorate and voting history over time, complimented by analysis and anecdotal stories, and enriched with demographic and economic history to help readers understand the changing shape of the electorate itself.

In these days of shrinking newsroom IT budgets and increasing demand for journalistic data visualization, the project clearly demonstrates the advantages of directly empowering journalists with the tools to visualize the narratives within data.

The site includes Drupal modules and a playground where you can work with pre-loaded data or upload your own data and generate embed code to place the visualizations you create on your blogs or websites. A "My VIDI" page shows the history of a user's visualizations so they can go back and edit at will.

We had a bit of a challenge recently in balancing our workload and the visceral drive to watch the World Cup games, so we came up with this visualization of video highlights from the matches (yes, I am also showing off our embedding feature):

World Cup 2010

This particular visualization uses our module TimelineMap, which was built as a Drupal Views 2 style plug-in. It is based on the Google Timemap API and allows you to load one or more datasets onto both a map and a timeline simultaneously. Only items in the visible range of the timeline are displayed as markers on the Google map.

Of course, you can also download the modules, load them into your own Drupal site and customize to your heart's content. Part of our idea in going with Drupal was that rather than try to create a community around our open source code, we would contribute code to an existing, thriving community. The interest and feedback from Drupalistas has been tremendous, which inspires us to push the development envelope even further.

We've already got some major early adopters. We helped Patchwork Nation implement the modules as a part of a larger port of their site to Drupal. Check out the colorful pie charts, bar charts, graphs, and the moving hardship index they created.

On the near horizon, we'll be releasing our VIDI Wizard module, which is still finishing up alpha testing. For now, though, please play with VIDI in your spare moments over the next two weeks when you're not glued to the World Cup, and let us know how we can make it even better!

The mantra of the event was that cyber-security will be the new big obsession of our various security services for the next century -- an obsession on par with the human and material resources that went into the nuclear threat in the last century. The emergence of Information and Network Infrastructure Commands in military general staffs across NATO countries demonstrates that this is no rhetorical flourish.

Yet, we see very little public discussion of the threat, or the strategy or investments we are considering in response. Much of the presentations were cyber-security specialists explaining to financial elites that cyber-security is many things: Cyber-crime, cyber-espionage (military and economic), and cyber-warfare. The main challenge is that a country's assignment of responsibility for managing offensive and defensive capabilities depends on the source and intent of the attack. Yet, in cyber-attacks the source and intent is rarely apparent so roles are blurred often generating confusion and ad hoc-ery, or even paralysis. Scott Charney gave a very good lunch speech summing these points up.

This is a huge problem. After hundreds of years of struggle to assert civilian control of the security services -- which was in large part achieved by dividing the roles of the military, police, and intelligence functions -- we find ourselves in a context where the institutional pressure to retain those divisions might quickly fade. Elements of the overreach by the Bush administration intelligence services monitoring domestic communications are just a small taste of where this can go.

A Need to Engage the Public

It is a challenge crying for an informed engaged public discourse, for the sake of our democratic principles, and to defend our brave security services against those who would abuse them for petty political ends.

One reason given for the lack of public dialogue about cyber-security is that a cyber-war doesn't draw blood, which makes it a challenge to visualize the importance of the threat to the general public. But, running with the analogy here a bit, we did not -- and still do not -- have a very public discourse on the nuclear threat either.

Traditional media did cover the Dallas event, but new media has a special responsibility to dig deeper, ask security elites the tough questions, demand answers, and break through this myth of the bloodless cyber-security threat. There is a need to tell the compelling stories, to inform, and elicit visceral passionate reactions, to devote space and energy to engaging coverage of these questions.

Massive data has been dominated by a thin layer of elites, and sophisticated data-visualization tools -- such as heat maps, motion charts, time maps, and tag maps -- generally have remained within the domain of those elites. This monopoly has allowed very few to decide which data were important to visualize. They've created some dazzling digital narratives, but it was a one-way street -- very high-tech, but also very news 1.0/web 1.0.

Data Visualization For All

Happily, a movement is rising to pry data from those who hoard it. Tim Berners-Lee gave an inspiring talk at TED in 2009, challenging viewers to join him in a public drive for "Raw Data Now." In 2010, Berners-Lee returned to TED with news of progress, while also egging the U.S. and U.K. into a competition for who could release more data, and recounting the inspiring case of global open source mapping for Haiti following the catastrophic earthquake earlier this year.

Equally exciting, some extremely powerful data-visualization tools now are available for anyone to create visualizations within a semi-controlled space: Data360, and IBM's Many Eyes are two of the best. We at the Jefferson Institute just released betas for a set of highly abstracted Drupal data-visualization modules -- including an importer -- which dramatically increase the range of possibilities for using data in visual storytelling. Our aim is for Drupal users to unleash the power of these tools in their own site.

Yet, for news sites big and small, experimenting with data visualization presents a large, uncomfortable challenge: allowing users the creative freedom to play with the data behind a carefully prepared visualization -- and even enable them to upload their own data, much as a reader might comment on a blog or news article. It takes courage and patience. Users might create visualizations that are ugly, misguided, or intentional misrepresentations. But you have to break some eggs to make an omelet, and this is a challenge news organizations must embrace. It will be a key component to their survival in a world of savvy consumers armed with vast quantities of data.

Sea of Data

Busting the professional monopoly on determining which data stories to tell is essential, and it becomes even more important when we consider the sea of data in which we swim today -- which is only growing larger. Soon, RFID tags will be on everything, swelling the tidal surge of data to levels we hardly can fathom.

Jack Knight called for media to inform and enlighten, so the people might determine their own true interests. As we come to understand his exhortation's new, evolving meaning, we must continually challenge ourselves to break down professional barriers in order to empower the infinite diversity of equally true interests. "Raw Data Now" should be our battle cry, and open-source data visualization modules our weaponry.

An even more utopian future, which featured a backdrop of Eastern philosophy, was set out by James Burke and summarized nicely in his "the day the universe changed" series. In essence, it is a vision that holds the transcendental equilibrium of the individual in and with the collectivity of everything -- in short, balance -- brings structure and stability. It sounds cool, but is challenging to find in reality. (Also consider the concept of the hivemind, which might exist somewhere, but I've yet to encounter it outside of philosophical rhetoric).

"Anarconomy"

In contrast, the Copenhagen "anarconomy" vision of anarchy is not particularly anarchistic. In fact, it is rather rule-based, albeit the collectivist social rules of open source copyleft communities. Jaron Lanier has called fundamentalist manifestations of this "Digital Maoism", which is catchier than it is historically accurate, but you get the idea... Another variant is expressed in the sometimes fickle wrath of the tough love inflicted by open source gatekeepers when cool new ideas conflict somehow with "community standards."

At its core, the central most useful idea set out here is that any absolutist argument for private property vs. open source is not very useful. We need both the individual and the collective, and they will forever be in tension, and that is mostly good and occasionally terrifying.

While not directly addressing the issue, the essay points to at least three issues that are relevant to journalism and community. I think that we far too often get caught up in our passions and forget that the contexts and logic may result in different answers in the different spheres.

1. The hardware/software infrastructure for delivering knowledge and services I've seen many arguments about how to adjust ownership structures to best deliver access to this infrastructure as a public good (i.e. universal access), but it is clear to all that such massive infrastructure has to be owned, and that owner should be compensated for its use in order to support security, maintenance, upgrades, and expansion of the infrastructure. I personally think that the key is to separate the role of infrastructure owner and the role of service provider (although telecom companies would fight like the devil against this). Some European governments are thinking along similar lines. Regarding software infrastructure, I think that most agree that software platforms for delivering intellectual content can be open source or proprietary, that each has its place, and can be mutually supportive.
2. Knowledge vs. service delivery Usually, reasonable folk can agree that knowledge should be open, while a service related to knowledge can be had at a fee. But we often disagree on what constitutes knowledge vs. service. The Copenhagen paper takes it a step sideways and argues that, essentially, anything that is an intellectual commodity is a public good and should be free/open. What is the difference between knowledge and an intellectual commodity is never made all that clear. Yet, no matter how we define "public good," I fail to see how anarchy is an inherently superior way to manage public goods. Viable alternatives include the centuries of experience in the regulation of monopolies. The Library of Congress's early rejection of Google's efforts to digitize the world of books is a great example: the LOC, which is the regulatory home of copyright, acted to balance the monopoly held by the author with the public interest of access in the pursuit of assuring that both were satisfied.
3. Open Source Journalism Is journalism knowledge or a value added service? The issue of not-for-profit journalism is a red herring here, I think. Tax-free status is mostly an issue of whether the firm is on a mission to produce social value, or shareholder value. If the social value delivered by a non-profit is an open commodity or a proprietary value-added service, is a separate question. If journalism is or can ideally be a value-added service (thus proprietary, even to anarconomists), then how long before it becomes "knowledge"?

If we were to call journalism an open source public good, that brings us to the discussion about whether utopia, anarconomy, or monopoly regulation are better paths to manage journalism in the public interest. Europe is not shy of this conversation with its passion for state-owned news programming in the public interest, but it is anathema to much of the U.S. culture of news as being fiercely independent.

Although, the tough love gatekeeper function of an open source core maintainer is not unlike that of a newspaper editor -- so, there may be something to this yet.

I agree that there are many upsides to the non-profit path, but it also carries significant management risk. The business environment of non-profits is often deeply misunderstood, even by the managers of tax-exempt companies themselves. More worrisome, boards are frequently ill-equipped to understand the strategic or operational specifics of non-profits, or even unable to read the peculiarities of their balance sheets. (Board Source is a great place to go for those looking to help their boards through some of these challenges.)

For news outlets, non-profit status would eliminate some of the negative pressures of shareholders looking for high margins at the expense of the essential role of news as social glue in a community. But while they don't have a mandate to generate shareholder value, non-profits do have a mandate to deliver measurable social value. Non-profit status is not a pass on the imperative to innovate, no matter how noble your cause, nor how deep your moral certitude.

To fulfill the responsibility that comes with their tax-free status, non-profit news outlets must fight to prove their measurable worth to society. If they fail, and many will, the creative destruction of the social market should sweep them away to make room for new rising social entrepreneurs to take their place.

When done properly, M&E begins with the grantee setting out clearly the objectives of the grant, the activities necessary to achieve the objectives, and the resources applied to make these activities happen. So, for example, blogging for Idea Lab is an activity. An objective might be to create a thriving community, or to help guide the way for community news in transition.

For our Knight project, the objective is a bit more specific: to create open source tools that make community news and information easy to visualize. Activities include mapping existing tools, surveying users for specific unmet needs, coding, testing, translating, demoing, fixing, etc. Our primary resource will be the Drupal community, which is also one of our project's main beneficiaries. Ideally, we will create a virtuous circle.

The grantee is expected to have a clear causal logic, setting out how the activities will achieve the objectives, and identifying verifiable measures to assess performance against targets at each level: resources, activities, and objectives. Especially objectives. It is important to do this well, because far too often the project gets underway and the grantee loses sight of the objectives. They end up obsessing about performance as it relates to activities and resources. This is natural because activities are much more easily controlled and measured than the messy causal chain leading to the objectives. The donor, meanwhile, is mostly interested in the objectives. These differing centers of attention are the root of most donor-grantee disputes.

By starting out so early on M&E -- essentially before the grant even begins -- Knight is demonstrating how these tools can be used for partnership and management, not merely bean-counting. Our opportunity as the grantee is to embrace their challenge of partnership.