(Inter)Facing a Crisis
Interface Draft and Outline of the Project
The interactive map will be a navigable map of the region. The image of the map will not have the topography, but I opt for a solid color with only key sites and city names listed along with the borders of various countries. This visually simple map will allow for the focus to shift to the stories of the Rohingya but also keep the larger image of the map in sight.Stories from different news agencies will be superimposed onto this map. Each story headline will be color coded according to the news agency from which it is taken. For example, news stories from Reuters will be in dark green. To mark the 2016 and 2017 differences, the map will have a toggle function. All stories will be shown on the landing page with equal weight, but on the side, there will be legend with 2016 and 2017 indicators. When one year is clicked, the stories published during that time will become bold. The other stories will become less opaque but not completely disappear. This choice is to highlight the connection between these two events that are a year apart.
In another panel, there will be different paths that the user can traverse. One set of paths will be according to the type of news agency: liberal, neutral, and conservative. Another path will trace the types of language (such as the word “refugee” or “terrorist”) used in the reporting. This path will highlight the possible intersections between different news agencies in how they report on the crisis at different times. Finally, there will be the option of not having any paths highlighted so that the user themselves can create their own aggregate path (free flow). When a predetermined path is chosen, the stories will pop-up according to chronological order, and on the right side of the page, a list of all the stories will appear. In the free flow path, when users click the stories, they can add it to their right panel aggregation. This panel will also can toggle the order of the stories. With this aggregation function, the users can create their own news archive of the crisis and reflect on how information is gathered, ordered, and read.
