The piece reminded me of the activist work I do with OCIO and Inside Airbnb on housing accessibility, STR and corporate landlords, as we often have used similar phrases like "5% of host manage 30% of Airbnb listings and 34% of the revenue", to accompany network vizs which indeed look like octopi.

In another room, distant yet conceptually connected by this reflection on power, sat my favorite piece: a card with an etched octopus whose tentacles enclose London, framed by the text "12 Landlords 'own'(?) London, taking £20,000,000 a year[...]The Land Octopus Sucks the Lifeblood of the People."

There was a neat, minimalist drawing that immediately caught my attention. Upon closer scrutiny, I was shocked as the diagram was captioned "Bombing plan for the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) by Robert A. Lewis", the co-pilot of the Enola Gay who dropped the Bomb

I walked through the historical data visualizations as if through an implicit essay on how (visual forms of) data are inevitably tied to dynamics of power: the practice is not neutral, but each piece is deeply embedded with the context, motivations for coming into existence & politics of its author

For anyone wanting to do something else with the data, you can find the spreadsheet with the processed data here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
#ijf2025

Rather than a disappearance of data journalism, #IJF2025 marks its normalization :) For example, about half of the events tagged as "investigative journalism" or "climate & environment" mention data-related keywords. Other categories are emerging, like #AI, at its 6th appearance at the Festival.

PS. all charts made thanks to the amazing @datawrapper.de 😍

[4/4] ...each with its strength and weaknesses when it comes to communicating specific angles. At the same time, there are many choices beyond chart type that play a crucial role in ensuring a chart effectively communicates what we intend it. In the next series of posts, I'll highlight some more.

[3/4] The same data about life expectancy in EU regions can be visualized with different charts...

[2/4] So I've decided to inaugurate my Bluesky account with a series of post trying to explain why this is the wrong question to ask, and what could work instead.

PART 1 looks at how chart choosers focused around "messages" can help, but also oversimplify, the process of deciding upon a chart.