Link: Parents can sometimes share too much information
In this informative column for the OC Family section of the Orange County Register I tackle a sensitive topic: what parents do and do no post about their children online. I interviewed mothers at the ends of the spectrum to explain why they either post all the time or not at all.
And beyond anecdotes, I shared information on the main things to be wary of when posting information about one’s child online.
I was asked to write about how motherhood has changed over the past 100 years. I first tackled the topic by thinking of the main themes: technology, family structures, jobs, communities and the state of the country.
I read stories autobiographical stories on how mothering has changed and I reviewed statistical information collected by the Census and federal agencies. My main subjects were a mother, her mother and her grandmother who I found by contacting local moms organizations.
For the state of the union, graphic artist Maxwell and I wanted to show the data behind the speech.
We based the graphic on the Constitution’s mandate for the address: that the president explain the state of the country while also recommending a political agenda to Congress. I then set out to find what data could represent both of those requirements. We chose milestones to compare speeches: 2012 (the graphic ran just before the 2013 speech), the previous year’s speech and the speeches from 50, 100 and 200 years ago.
For the actual state of America, we chose a few factors: legal immigration (represents transitioning times for the country and its policies), military size (could represent wars and U.S. policy), unemployment (an economic measure), people per square mile (to show the country’s growth over time) and the national debt (an economic and policy measure).
For the actual speech, I first found the text of each speech and found the most common words. I then color-coded the words that likely represented domestic or foreign policy. We included the first sentence of each speech to further show change over time.
Finally, we included a timeline on the page of all the speeches, showing the length, mediums and target grade level of each. Notes along the timeline point out interesting milestones and changes in the speech.
This graphic is based on the findings of a study on irrigation in California causing an increase in monsoons in the southwest.
The main difficulty in presenting this graphic was explaining enough of the systems, but in so much detail that the reader became lost in one step of the graphic.
As Barack Obama’s second presidential term neared, I wondered how we could show the timeline of the country in recent years. I worked to find data stretching back to 1933 while artist Maxwell illustrated the information. Each bit of data is intended to be a measure of something heavily impacted by the president.
I also found historic milestones of Obama’s first term, coupled with his approval rating by week, to provide more detail leading up to his second term.
