“Bettering Data”

Bettering Data is a collaborative effort between criminologists and educators at Georgia State University and workers at DataWorks, a training and data service provider at Georgia Tech that focuses on empowering underrepresented youth in computing. Central to this project is a video that employs visualization to narrate the story of arrests in Atlanta, symbolized through two contrasting hands: One referencing the “Hands up, don’t shoot” slogan that arose from the tragic shooting of Michael Brown in 2014, and the other holding a 3D space-time cube where arrest data from 2020 materializes as dots falling onto a map of Atlanta's neighborhoods. Larger, red dots are homicides while all other arrests are shown in black. By transforming arrest data into a narrative, Bettering Data seeks to foster discussion and dialogue about police-community relations. This project highlights the potential of data visualization to encourage critical reflection and discussion about complex social and political issues.