Mapping the State of the Union
I first looked at “Mapping the State of the Union,” an interactive news article by The Atlantic. The article is centered around a symbol point map of the world. Each gray circle plotted on the map shows how often that specific place/country has been referenced by American presidents in their State of the Union addresses. The map was created based on 224 State of the Union addresses. Although the data set itself is small, it is definitely representative of America’s national stance because presidents write State of the Union addresses in an extremely strategic manner. They use their limited time to address their foremost concerns and priorities. Design-wise, the map is both highly interactive and easy to navigate. For example, by using the timeline below the map, we can see how the gray circles plotted on the map move over time. Also, we can click on any of the circles to read the passages in which the location beneath the circle was referenced. Lastly, the news article includes historians’ interpretations of the map. It points out what readers should not miss while also leaving room for their own interpretations.
How Your Hometown Affects Your Chances of Marriage
Secondly, I looked at “How Your Hometown Affects Your Chances of Marriage.” This New York Times article is based on a Harvard study titled “The Impacts of Neighborhoods on Intergenerational Mobility.” The map included in the article is an example of a choropleth (colored polygon map). It shows people’s marriage patterns across the United States: more specifically, how likely people are to be married at age 26. The best part of this article is that it incorporates factors like class and race, not just geography. For example, the article juxtaposes two maps that show the marriage patterns of poor people and rich people in the South, respectively. The article then explains that “lower-income children in the South are disproportionately black, and marriage rates are also lower among African-Americans.”
Scholarly Maps vs. Non-Scholarly Maps
These two maps that I discussed above show the differences between a scholarly map and a non-scholarly map. “How Your Hometown Affects Your Chances of Marriage” is a scholarly map because it is based on serious research that utilized an extensive data set (more than five million people who moved as children during the 1980s and 1990s) to prove a causal relationship. On the other hand, “Mapping the State of the Union” is not a scholarly map because it is based on a small data set (only 224 speeches). While the speeches give us a general sense of how the concerns of American presidents evolved over time, that is only the beginning of a serious scholarly inquiry. While the map can be used to pose interesting research questions about American imperialism, US-China relations, and so on, or draw public attention to those topics, we cannot reach a concrete conclusion about American foreign policy just by looking at 224 State of the Union addresses. Therefore, we should see this as a non-scholarly map.
Geography of the Post & Gossamer Network
These maps both map the post offices in the nineteenth-century West, but they differ in two ways. First, “Geography of the Post” is a symbol point map whereas “Gossamer Network” is a combination of a symbol point map, story map, and choropleth (colored polygon map). Second, “Geography of the Post” omits an important piece of truth that “Gossamer Network” exposes: the fact that post offices in the nineteenth-century West aided US invasion of Indigenous lands. By putting these two maps in comparison, we can clearly see that maps are never neutral. It is important to question what kind of argument/agenda a map is aiming to advance.
