Bad Maps - bad Medium

With each new headline that captures the fleeting interest of a deluged public comes the need to relate the bad news to something relevant to the viewer. We need to establish a "handle" to understand the latest calamity. It gives us a scaling metric and it anchors the conversation to something outside the hyperbolae associated with the event.

All news has a spatial aspect so it is no surprise that there is often a location context usually expressed as a map. Marshall McLuhan famously coined the expression "the medium is the message". That elegant phrase always seemed a bit obtuse to me. But if you think about the role that a map or at least the location context plays in a headline trumpeting brassily across the internet then clearly the map is a medium and of course it is the message. Or at least part of it.

Great. We've just set up the hypothesis that news is spatial and maps are the message. Here's an interesting experiment. We as spatial specialists own the process that provides that medium and are responsible for the translation that medium performs to convey the message. A feeble map means a feeble message. There are some truly brilliant maps associated with news stories that tell you absolutely nothing useful. I'll bet that with one internet search and 5 clicks you can find at least one of those. And there are some truly dreadful maps that we should hang our heads in shame for the damaged message they have imparted.

If we pick on an truly frightening crisis - the ebola outbreak in Africa - it should be a safe assumption that the spatial aspects of this are as riveting as the swinging head of a venomous snake. The handle we need to understand the news, is intrinsically spatial. Same as we need to know where that snake is, we need to know where the disease is. So the medium had better be nearly perfect. 

I'm carefully avoiding specific examples because the owner of the problem is most likely not any of the earnest folks trying to show a useful map but it is the spatial professionals. A quick search will take you to some of the examples - both good and bad.

Here are some thoughts that occur to me as possible check list items to understand whether the map design works and we have supported our end of Marshall McLuhan's assertion.

1. In the ebola maps, the viewer will surely want to know whether anybody they know might be in harm's way. So can I find that out on the map ?
2. The viewer wants to understand the temporal aspect of the disease. Can I simply see from the map how the spread has happened ?
3. Where might the disease go next ? Can I see the transport mechanisms that might show where it could go ?
4. What's being done to contain the disease ? Where are the quarantines ? Surely a quarantine is a spatial thing.
5. At a glance, does the map tell me something. Do I need to use buttons, sliders, or knobs to learn something ?
6. Can I then discover something ? Clicking on a hospital should tell me something I want to know.
7. Does the map show me a way I could help ?
8. Is the map current ? An out of date and undated map is worse than useless.
9. Does the map help those on the ground who are looking the disease in the face ?

Is the message the map ? I think so and we have a responsibility to do our best to make sure that message has a beautiful clarity to it whatever the message is.