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Analysis Of The Best American Infographics

Decent Essays

In the foreword of “The Best American Infographics 2016,” Gareth Cook mentions an infographic entitled “How the Parties Came Apart.” About it, he says, “Look, for example at “How the Parties Came Apart,” and how it uses red and blue for the parties, and then a gray that only catches when there are many connections across the partisan divide (mostly in the early years). And consider all the extraneous details that have been omitted. The story is strong.” Why are the extraneous details worth mentioning? Why does he leave the vague term “extraneous details” instead of elaborating on it? One could argue that the author was penning a foreword; there was simply not enough space to go into a deeper analysis of one infographic when there are many …show more content…

The artist of the infographic which Cook mentioned, Mauro Martino, developed a plethora of network diagrams to show the movement and divisions of party lines from 1949-2011. These diagrams can be very informative when looking at surface-level party movements, but do not explain why the movement occurred the way it did. These are the extraneous details Cook was referencing. Why did the author think it unimportant to not mention important things occurring that could be a reason for the specific shift in parties? In researching what details Cook is talking about, I found that party division was directly related to what was occurring, both economically and politically. At first glance, one cannot, without intimate knowledge of the world in the past century, draw informed conclusions about why political parties shifted the way that they did. The lack of details forces the reader to desire more about the information the infographic is displaying. Humans are naturally curious beings, and the artist of this infographic capitalizes on this. While I understand why these details were omitted, I think they make the infographic harder to understand, especially to those with little to no understanding of the political climate of the last sixty-two years. Infographics were made to be informative, but the omission of too many details can ruin the infographic for the general public. Adding a short synopsis of the political climate during

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