Critique of a Multimedia

Yeong Geun Kim
Jul 10, 2017 · 2 min read
Presidential Election Results: Donald J. Trump Wins ( https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/president)

The above piece is about the U.S 2016 president election’s result. The figure is originated from The New York Times’s 2016 Visual Story: Presidential Election Results: Donald J. Trump Wins (https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/president). This piece includes the information about which party win at what states with multiple vote rate charts.

Personally, I prefer that figure over written newspapers or reports because it clearly shows who wins at which state without any wordy sentences. In short, due to the fact that the above figure delivers the main message (who wins) quickly and clearly, compared to text, I like it.

It represents a good use of multimedia. One of the advantages of multimedia is that it delivers message quickly, clearly, and vividly to its reader, as I mentioned above. My chosen figure represents those characters of multimedia in the decent way. Look at the above figure and find California. Then, you can easily figure out that Democratic defeats Republican in the state in 1 second even though you are “not an English speaker”.

However, there is one thing I got confused, looking at the above figure. I cannot find the information which party wins with “how much gap”. For example, in the Indiana, Republicans win with 57 percent of vote rates. But in the Wisconsin, they do just with 47 percent of it. If I were The New York Times editor, I might mark Indiana with deeper red color than Wisconsin. In this visual story, I could know the information through the separate chart below the figure.

The length of the visual story is short but delivers the clear message. So, the length is not important matter in this story.

To sum up, If the visual story include a bit more detail such as the gap, I point out at above, it could have been improved.

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