{"id":1786190,"date":"2018-08-30T12:29:51","date_gmt":"2018-08-30T16:29:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/?p=1786190"},"modified":"2018-08-30T12:29:51","modified_gmt":"2018-08-30T16:29:51","slug":"studying-how-and-why-maps-go-viral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2018\/08\/studying-how-and-why-maps-go-viral\/","title":{"rendered":"Studying How and Why Maps Go Viral"},"content":{"rendered":"

Geographer Anthony Robinson<\/a> is studying the phenomenon of viral maps\u2014maps that are widely disseminated on social media, many of which are terrible: superficial, inaccurate or deliberately misleading. One burst of virality occurred in November 2016, when there was an eruption of maps, some silly, others dead serious, showing the outcome of the U.S. presidential election “if only x<\/em> voted<\/a>” (where x<\/em> was women, or people of colour, or some other demographic). This episode is apparently one of the subjects of Robinson’s paper in Cartography and Geographic Information Science<\/em><\/a>, in which he sketches out a framework for evaluating viral maps’ design and the ways they spread. The paper is behind a paywall, but here’s a news article about it from Penn State<\/a>, where Robinson works.<\/p>\n

Previously: When Maps Lie<\/a>; How to Circulate a Fake Election Map<\/a>; What If Only \u2026 Voted?<\/a>; Bad Internet Maps: \u2018A Social Media Plague\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Geographer Anthony Robinson is studying the phenomenon of viral maps\u2014maps that are widely disseminated on social media, many of which are terrible: superficial, inaccurate or deliberately misleading. One burst of virality occurred in November 2016,… More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"autoblue_enabled":true,"autoblue_custom_message":"","autoblue_shares":[],"autoblue_post_url":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[330],"tags":[237,349],"class_list":["post-1786190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","category-politics","tag-map-literacy","tag-social-media","post_format-post-format-link"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1167,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2016\/03\/when-maps-lie\/","url_meta":{"origin":1786190,"position":0},"title":"When Maps Lie","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"10 March 2016","format":"link","excerpt":"Andrew Wiseman's \"When Maps Lie\" was posted on CityLab last year, but its importance is evergreen: it's about map literacy, and how to avoid being fooled by confusing, misleading or simply bad maps. This is very much what Mark Monmonier did in\u00a0How to Lie with Maps\u00a0(see my review;\u00a0Amazon,\u00a0iBooks); Wiseman updates\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cartography"","block_context":{"text":"Cartography","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/cartography\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5545,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2017\/10\/bad-internet-maps-a-social-media-plague\/","url_meta":{"origin":1786190,"position":1},"title":"Bad Internet Maps: ‘A Social Media Plague’","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"30 October 2017","format":"link","excerpt":"Business Insider\u2019s\u00a0widely mocked, since-deleted-from-Twitter, but very very viral map of the most popular fast food restaurants by state is the launching-off point for The Ringer\u2019s Claire McNear, who rants about the maps clogging the Internet that are stupid, uninformed, wrong and exist only to generate clicks. Among other things, she\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Unusual Maps"","block_context":{"text":"Unusual Maps","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/unusual-maps\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/bi-fast-food-1024x768.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/bi-fast-food-1024x768.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/bi-fast-food-1024x768.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/bi-fast-food-1024x768.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1806609,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2022\/03\/north-american-maps-for-curious-minds\/","url_meta":{"origin":1786190,"position":2},"title":"Review: North American Maps for Curious Minds","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"31 March 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"North American Maps for Curious Minds, written by Matthew Bucklan and Victor Cizek and featuring maps and illustrations by Jack Dunnington, is the second book in the Maps for Curious Minds series: Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds came out in 2019, and Wild Maps for Curious Minds is scheduled to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Book Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Book Reviews","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/book-reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Book cover: North American Maps for Curious Minds","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/north-american-maps-curious-minds-236x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4225,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2017\/04\/a-typographic-literary-map-of-london\/","url_meta":{"origin":1786190,"position":3},"title":"A Typographic Literary Map of London","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"10 April 2017","format":"link","excerpt":"You might have seen this typographic literary map of London: it was featured in a recent article in the\u00a0Telegraph and went a bit viral from there. The work of London-based artist Dex, who runs a creative studio with interior designer Anna Burles, the map places the names of fictional characters\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/art\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/dex-literary-london-1024x732.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/dex-literary-london-1024x732.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/dex-literary-london-1024x732.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/dex-literary-london-1024x732.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":6035,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2015\/10\/vargics-miscellany-of-curious-maps\/","url_meta":{"origin":1786190,"position":4},"title":"Vargic’s Miscellany of Curious Maps","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"27 October 2015","format":"link","excerpt":"In January 2014 a teenage design student from Slovakia named Martin Vargic posted a map of the Internet\u2014inspired, he told The Independent, by the xkcd classic\u2014on his DeviantArt page. The map quickly went viral. Since then, he's been producing maps of all sorts of things\u2014a revised Internet map, a literature\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Unusual Maps"","block_context":{"text":"Unusual Maps","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/unusual-maps\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1805944,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2022\/01\/the-lighthouse-map\/","url_meta":{"origin":1786190,"position":5},"title":"The Lighthouse Map","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"27 January 2022","format":"link","excerpt":"A map showing the lighthouses of Europe has gone viral on social media. It\u2019s a Geodienst project that actually dates back to 2017 or so. The map is generated using lighthouse data extracted from OpenStreetMap. \u201cMore specifically, it asks the Overpass API for all elements with an seamark:light:sequence attribute, decodes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Nautical"","block_context":{"text":"Nautical","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/nautical\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/lighthousemap.gif?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/lighthousemap.gif?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/lighthousemap.gif?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1786190"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1786193,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786190\/revisions\/1786193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1786190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1786190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1786190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}