{"id":1730,"date":"2012-08-22T22:00:12","date_gmt":"2012-08-23T03:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/articles\/\/"},"modified":"2016-01-23T22:02:49","modified_gmt":"2016-01-24T03:02:49","slug":"video-and-data-visualisation-examples-for-think-tanks-from-the-igarape-institute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/articles\/video-and-data-visualisation-examples-for-think-tanks-from-the-igarape-institute\/","title":{"rendered":"Video and data visualisation examples for think tanks, from the Igarape Institute"},"content":{"rendered":"

In response to our previous\u00a0post listing examples of videos that think tanks can use to communicate\u00a0<\/a>to their audiences, Robert Muggah of the\u00a0Igarape Institute<\/a>, a think tank based in Rio de Janeiro that focuses on\u00a0thematic priorities such as drug policy, violence reduction and international cooperation, wrote to us about a couple of projects that we feel are a useful addition to our list. This post is largely based on a draft he wrote.<\/p>\n

The first project is a short documentary called\u00a0Faces of Violence – a Non Fiction Story<\/strong>, \u00a0which\u00a0highlights the many connections between violence and development. It was developed in cooperation with a local\u00a0film company,\u00a0Conspiracao<\/a>, and\u00a0in partnership with the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was\u00a0launched at a Ministerial Summit organised by the Norwegian and Swiss governments in 2010 as well as at the UN General Assembly later that year.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Px2yxw1EdeQ<\/p>\n

The purpose of the film was first to generate awareness among senior level policy makers, but also to serve as a campaigning and advocacy tool for a large network of partners working in multiple languages. Igarape deliberately kept the messages very simple and straight-forward and drew on data and statistics generated with partners such as\u00a0Small Arms Survey<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0WHO<\/a>. They also recruited photographers based in Rio de Janeiro and Juba to record the personal narratives of former perpetrators of violence, who in turn became victims of violence and champions of violence prevention.<\/p>\n

The second project developed by Igarape is not a video but an application that supports big data visualisation, called the\u00a0Mapping Arms Data (MAD)<\/a>\u00a0(only available using the Google Chrome browser). \u00a0This was done by teaming up with\u00a0Google Ideas<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Peace Research Institute\u00a0Oslo<\/a>\u00a0to draw attention to the global arms trade. MAD is\u00a0an interactive tool with more than a million data points and visualises authorized transfers since the early 1990s. It seeks to inject transparency into a debate that is often quite opaque and polemic.<\/p>\n

The Institute and Google Ideas also prepared a short “lightening” panel to advertise the app and draw attention to wider issue of arms transfers during a summit sponsored by Google in July 2012. Some of the underlying data relating to the value of the arms trade featured in the presentation was drawn from the Small Arms Survey, as well as from the Peace Research Institute Oslo.\u00a0The presentation is posted on Google’s official blog:<\/p>\n