These slides accompany a data visualization assignment in the course, IML440: Interdisciplinary Thesis Production. In this course, students produce a media-rich, natively digital thesis project which constitutes the culmination of the Honors in Multimedia Scholarship program, offered in the Division of Media Arts + Practice at the USC's School of Cinematic Arts.

1. data visualization
a few models
IML440 Spring 2015
Professor Virginia Kuhn, PhD

2. These abstracts and images are drawn from
previous Honors thesis projects, in which data
visualization began cropping up over the last
few years.
While there is no mandate to include such
data visualization, it is an increasingly
important practice with which graduating
Honors students need familiarity.
We will look more carefully at these projects
and the data viz assignment together in class.

3. Each project begins with the student’s
name, the project abstract and the
project URL where applicable and is
then followed a few screenshots that
demonstrate the inclusion of visualized
data.

4. Lights, Camera, Inaction
by Nicole Ro
http://storm.usc.edu/~nro/about.html

5. http://storm.usc.edu/~nro/about.html

8. Anonymous Identities
by Ian Malave
Over the past decade, the internet has grown at an astounding rate. In
this time, advertisers have leveraged new technologies to shape the
online economy and to dramatically strengthen their power. At the
same time, countless companies have sprung up and begun vying for a
limited source of advertising dollars, reducing their individual power. In
turn, these companies have been pressured to adopt new methods of
tracking users in order to secure advertising funding. Consequently,
anonymity has become non-existent for internet users, and even more
significantly, advertisers have begun exploiting their knowledge of users
to filter what users see online.
While this data economy has enabled many people to access
advanced technologies and web platforms for free, they come at a
cost: Internet users’ activity is helping to shape a future in which
conglomerates and advertisers dominate and can profoundly impact
the online economy through small changes. Anonymous Identities
provides a representative look at the progression of the online economy
over the past ten years. The project provokes users to think more
critically about their online identities, and to thoughtfully consider how
their online activity can help to shape the future of the internet.
http://ianmalave.com/IML_Thesis/landing.html

11. Equality < Equity
by Soo-ah Rho
This project explores educational disparity in the United States and the
stark differences between schools in urban and suburban settings. Public
schools, traditionally funded heavily by local property taxes, continue to
widen the gap between education quality in high and low poverty
neighborhoods. By examining how poverty affects a student’s
education as well as the funding systems of public schools in key states
such as Illinois and California, Equality < Equity reveals the injustice and
segregation in the public education system of the United States.
While many states have undergone substantial reform, they have yet to
ensure equal and adequate funding. Poorer schools struggle to gain
state level funding that will make up for the lack of local revenue, but in
the words of California Governor Jerry Brown, “equal treatment for
children in unequal situations is not justice,” –nor is it equity. The larger
problem is that not only do children in urban, high-poverty schools
receive less funding, they also face challenges that schools are unable
to address. By juxtaposing the fundamentally unequal funding systems
with the challenges children in urban areas face, this project will
highlight an injustice that can no longer be ignored.
http://storm.usc.edu/~srho/

16. Tiffany Chen’s overview video re: her thesis
which blends info viz with physical space:
https://vimeo.com/53113798
Kelley Chittendon’s thesis on data privacy in
Facebook: http://whostolethecookie.net/
(see pane 3 for visualizations)