US Federal Contract Spending in 2009 vs. Agency-Related Media Coverage
Wesley Grubbs (American, born 1976)
and Nicolas Yahnke (American, born 1988)
of Pitch Interactive (USA, est. 2007)
2010
Processing software
Pitch Interactive’s data visualizations illuminate complex sets of information in a way that is dynamic, accessible, and visually eloquent. In this graphic, Pitch Interactive plots U.S. federal agency spending in 2009 against media coverage of those agencies in the same year. On the left, a multicolored circle, with each agency represented by a stripe proportional to its budget presence, reveals that defense spending accounts for the majority of our federal budget—almost 70%, to be precise. The stripes flow out from this circle and are regrouped in a similar graphic on the right, which instead shows the proportion of media coverage by agency. Immediately, it is clear that there is a dramatic mismatch between what our taxes fund and which issues occupy national discourse. Using a minimalist, intuitive design, Pitch Interactive encourages users to think through the implications of this fundamental disjunct.
Category: Worlds
Tags: Communications / Visualizations / Networks / Maps
