RSF Press Freedom Index Heatmap 2010
I’d been looking to find a good project to experiment with the Polymaps mapping library for some time before I hit on the annual Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Sans Frontiers. The index was perfect for experimenting, since it was a small data set, readily available & didn’t require any cleaning, just a bit of formatting. Quick & easy – perfect for focusing on Polymaps & not getting bogged down in data.
Reporters Sans Frontiers has been producing the ‘Press Freedom Index’ (PFI) since 2002. According to their press release, the index “measures the violations of press freedom in the world.”
RSF sends questionnaires “to its network of 140 correspondents around the world, and to journalists, researchers, jurists and human rights activists” in an attempt to gauge levels of press freedom around the globe. RSF produces a report and ranking table, as well as a PDF map based on their findings of for the year.
The data is perfect for a heatmap, which is infinitely more aesthetically pleasing than a table (plus it gives you a chance to brush up on your geography a bit). Shading was based on country scores in the index and I was able to include the country ranking in tooltip that appears on mouseover. Double-clicking the country opens the RSF country page, giving you access to RSF’s country profiles.
Next steps: I’d like to add a brief country synopsis within the tooltip, so that you can view a quick snapshot of events that impacted a country’s ranking. I would also like to add the ability to view heatmaps of rankings from previous years, probably via a drop-down menu of some sort. A full-screen button would be nice too
Note: Best viewed in anything but IE. The map doesn’t work at all in IE7 or below (& likely never will). Haven’t yet tested in IE8 or above.