bonny mcclain

Data storytelling has never been more popular. Immanuel Kant stated the following in 1802, "The history of occurrences at different times, which is true history, is nothing other than a consecutive geography, and thus it is a great limitation on history if one does not know where something happened, or what it was like”. To truly bring history to light we need to bring the right data into the conversation, use the right tools, and be able to hold a tension between what we would like the solutions to be and what limits the actual realization of change. The story I would like to tell by engaging spatial and non-spatial data centering around the role disinformation and politics played in the profound deforestation of the Amazon since 2018. What can we measure? What should we be measuring?

We will use satellite imagery, social media data, media headlines, and non-spatial climate science knowledge to explore how to create robust data questions worthy of sincere and focused analysis and discussion. Open-source tools and datasets will allow us to test our hypothesis against our existing biases. In the absence of objective experience, we are human after all, what tools can help measure expectation, time-series comparisons, and inference?