{"id":9575,"date":"2009-06-10T16:14:38","date_gmt":"2009-06-10T21:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=9575"},"modified":"2012-10-19T04:05:34","modified_gmt":"2012-10-19T09:05:34","slug":"politics-graphics-and-telling-the-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/06\/10\/politics-graphics-and-telling-the-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"Politics, Graphics, And Telling The Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jim C. sent us this graphic designed to illustrate a proposal to reduce the lanes on Jarvis Street in Toronto from five to four (Globe and Mail<\/em>, May 22, 2009, p. A12). \u00a0 As Jim points out, the text of the graphic describes the proposal accurately, and even points out that the graphic misrepresents the change, but the graphic itself still gives the impression that the reduction will be to two, not four lanes.<\/p>\n

\"jarvisbikelanes2\"<\/p>\n

It is a good example of how much graphics matter. Even with the text, it is potentially misleading.\u00a0 Such misrepresentation can also be purposeful and political.\u00a0 Jim speculates that this is the case here:<\/p>\n

As is often the case whenever there are modest efforts to make space on city streets for pedestrians and cyclists, right-wing councillors (and affluent commuters) raised the spectre of traffic chaos and a ‘war on the car’.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you’re interested in comparing the representation of this proposal by the Globe with its representation in the proposal itself, check out the final page of the proposal<\/a>.\u00a0 Thanks to Nick J. B. in the comments for the link.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Lisa Wade is a\u00a0professor of sociology at Occidental College<\/a>. You can follow her on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jim C. sent us this graphic designed to illustrate a proposal to reduce the lanes on Jarvis Street in Toronto from five to four (Globe and Mail, May 22, 2009, p. A12). \u00a0 As Jim points out, the text of the graphic describes the proposal accurately, and even points out that the graphic misrepresents the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,2123,274,85,221,341],"class_list":["post-9575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-environmentnature","tag-methodsuse-of-data","tag-politics","tag-cars","tag-ruralurban"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9575"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9642,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9575\/revisions\/9642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}