COML 550 - Blog Post #1Sustainability is a hot topic in everything from personal practices to global politics these days. And "while attitudes vary across generations, countries, and industries, 85% of consumers have become ‘greener’ in their purchasing in recent years” (Business Wire, 2021). So where does one start if seeking to develop a broader knowledge of what it means to be green? I always like to start with a big picture and work my way down into granular details, so I started by looking at going green on a global scale!  Figure 1 Which Countries Have the Strongest Energy Policies? (Green Campus Initiative, 2022) The figure above, published by the Green Campus Initiative at the University of Maine, offers a broad and perhaps over-simplified visual of how green countries are considered to be around the globe. But green-seekers beware, this visual ranking of "greenness" by country leaves a lot of room for viewer interpretation error. This visualization is the sole visual of the article titled "The Greenest Countries" but itself is titled "Which Countries Have the Strongest Energy Policies?" This is just the first of many places a viewer may become confused or misled. The solitary key on this figure implies that the score of each country is represented by where the country's color sits on a sliding gradient of shades from blue (lower score) to yellow (higher score) - a woefully non-specific scale - but does not offer any context as to the factors considered in determining and assigning scores. Furthermore, there is no explanation as to why some countries are grayed out and do not have a numeric score. Confusing "Fun Facts"
To further confuse matters, Costa Rica, Africa, and Hong Kong each get a "fun fact" that doesn't fit anywhere within the story the visualization is telling but rather surfaces additional questions like: why was Hong Kong scored individually? And, again, how was everyone else scored. My last observation of this visualization is not what it is lacking, but rather, what it is promoting: being a Mercator Projection map, this visual promotes a bias of greater importance and/or significance toward Europe and North America.
With more questions than clarity from that last visualization, let's examine a different, more effective source.  Figure 2 Mapped: The Greenest Countries in the World (Wood, 2021) Where figure 1 fell short, our next figure, appropriately titled "The Greenest Countries in the World," fulfills the curiosities of even the greenest green-info seeker. Supporting contextual content both in the form of text as well as visual icons both adds to the visualization's credibility, and ensures that any viewer of this visualization is left with little room for misinterpretation.
Shades of green and a numeric score are used to indicate the "greenness" of each country, but here scores and their corresponding colors are grouped into 4 specific shades and score ranges. And by utilizing 3 globes rather than a Mercator projection, this visualization is less likely to support map bias.
I would argue, though, that the strongest point this visualization makes is that "being green" is a complex, multifaceted, and nuanced issue. Here, the many contributing factors under consideration toward being green are illustrated in a way that is accessible and entices readers to further exploration of this important subject. References Business Wire. (2021, October 14). Recent Study Reveals More Than a Third of Global Consumers Are Willing to Pay More for Sustainability as Demand Grows for Environmentally-Friendly Alternatives. Business Wire. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211014005090/en/Recent-Study-Reveals-More-Than-a-Third-of-Global-Consumers-Are-Willing-to-Pay-More-for-Sustainability-as-Demand-Grows-for-Environmentally-Friendly-Alternatives Green Campus Initiative. (2022, March 7). The Greenest Countries—Green Campus Initiative—University of Maine. Green Campus Initiative. https://umaine.edu/gci/2022/03/07/the-greenest-countries/ Thelwell, K. (2020, September 12). The Effect of Map Bias on How We View Developing Countries. The Borgen Project. https://borgenproject.org/map-bias/ Wood, T. (2021, February 25). Mapped: The Greenest Countries in the World. Visual Capitalist. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/greenest-countries-in-the-world/
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