GraphJam Side A · Music & pop culture in charts
The Plate Archive24 charts

Politics and Public Life, in Charts

The collection holding this archive's single most-linked chart, and the only one whose jokes were being argued over in public at the time.

Twenty-four charts, fifty-nine sites still link to it, and the archive’s biggest single hit. This is the collection where a joke format collided with a real argument, and the collision is the reason a chart site from 2008 still has links from publications that have never mentioned pie charts otherwise.

The chart that outlived the archive

Consequences of gay marriage is linked from twenty-five sites — more than any other page here, including the homepage’s own most-linked plates. It is published separately as a plate, and the reason it travelled is structural rather than political: it takes a claim made repeatedly in campaign material, treats it as a prediction, and plots the prediction. A chart that falsifies a stated forecast is usable as evidence, and it was used that way, by Mother Jones among others.

A second chart with the same title appears in June 2010, submitted independently by a different reader. Its image was not recovered. That duplication is itself a finding about what the audience wanted to say.

The 2008 campaign, in real time

Five entries plot the election while it was running. US presidential preference is a straight preference chart. Probability of Obama Bumper Sticker versus Vehicle Type is a correlation nobody measured and everybody recognised. National Media Election Coverage, filed under the news, plots the coverage rather than the race. During Obama’s Inaugural Speech is a time-use chart of a single event, and US Political Belief vs Media Attention Given, published as its own plate, is the most analytically ambitious chart in the collection: two axes, a stated relationship, and an argument about attention that would hold up in a media studies seminar.

People Who Want Sarah Palin to Run for President in 2012 arrives in February 2009 and is linked from two sites, which is a small piece of evidence about when that conversation started.

Religion, belief and the space between

Concerns of Dyslexic Evangelicals is linked from two sites, a joke that requires reading the title twice. Probability Someone Will Insult Religion if They Are plots a conditional. Belief in Santa is a decay curve by age. Food Options in Church of England Jihad is the collection’s most improbable title and its subject is institutional mildness rather than religion.

None of these is a chart about doctrine. They are all charts about how belief gets performed in public, which is a different subject and the one this audience was actually interested in.

Government as a process

How a Government Gets a Job Done is a flow chart, and it is the correct diagram: a process with many steps and no exit. The Political Cycle plots the same thing as a loop. Bipartisan Agreement in Action! carries its joke in its title; the image itself is not among those recovered. Budget Concerns for Georgia: July is oddly specific and, for that reason, the most convincing entry here.

The collection closes in September 2010 with Nerdgasm states renamed by gdp, which is linked from three sites, and belongs half to this collection and half to the maps. It renames every American state after the country whose economy it matches, a real dataset, correctly applied, drawn as a joke, and still circulating because the underlying comparison is genuinely surprising.

Charts here
24
Images recovered
12
Published as plates
3
Referring domains
59
First posted
Jul 2008
Last posted
Sep 2010

The charts

In publication order. Sides run in tens, the way a record does. A chart marked as a plate has its own page and its own retrospective; the rest are published here, at the addresses they held when they were posted.

  1. A1

    Food Options in Church of England Jihad

    · Drawn by klamath

  2. A2

    Budget Concerns for Georgia: July

    · Drawn by Zeromark · image not recovered

  3. A3

    Probability of Obama Bumper Sticker versus Vehicle Type

    · Drawn by Bob

  4. A4

    Who Benefits Most From The $700,000,000,000.00 Bailout?

    · Drawn by Rick Taylor · 3 domains still link here · published as a plate

  5. A5

    The Political Cycle

    · Drawn by David Joyner

  6. A6

    US presidential preference

    · Drawn by PaulS

  7. A7

    Concerns of Dyslexic Evangelicals

    · Drawn by Chris M · 2 domains still link here

  8. A8

    US Political Belief vs Media Attention Given

    · Drawn by Jenny Darrah · 3 domains still link here · published as a plate

  9. A9

    Consequences of gay marriage

    · Drawn by Aaron G · 25 domains still link here · published as a plate

  10. A10

    Belief in Santa

    · Drawn by Essylt · image not recovered

  11. Side B
  12. B1

    During Obama’s Inaugural Speech

  13. B2

    People Who Want Sarah Palin to Run for President in 2012

    · Drawn by Brad Kimmel · 2 domains still link here · image not recovered

  14. B3

    Politicians’ answers to questions

    · image not recovered

  15. B4

    The Average day of a PETA person

    · Drawn by usctrojanfan77

  16. B5

    The Gay Agenda

    · Drawn by Flautenpupie79 · image not recovered

  17. B6

    Probability Someone Will Insult Religion if They are

    · Drawn by somejsmith · 2 domains still link here · image not recovered

  18. B7

    Biggest Threats to America’s Youth

    · Drawn by HackerOnHacker · image not recovered

  19. B8

    How a Government Gets a Job Done

    · Drawn by emanedoc1

  20. B9

    Literacy

    · Drawn by timba · 3 domains still link here · image not recovered

  21. B10

    Why People “Go Green”

    · Drawn by SeamusMcCullagh · image not recovered

  22. Side C
  23. C1

    Prime Time TV Censorship

    · Drawn by DarylM

  24. C2

    Consequences Of Gay Marriage

    · Drawn by Aaron G · image not recovered

  25. C3

    Bipartisan Agreement in Action!

    · Drawn by GR3NAD13R · image not recovered

  26. C4

    Nerdgasm states renamed by gdp

    · 3 domains still link here · image not recovered

Queries answered

What is the most-cited chart in this collection?

Consequences of gay marriage, from November 2008, linked from twenty-five sites, the highest count in the entire archive. Mother Jones cited it, and it is published as its own plate.

What period does the collection cover?

July 2008 to September 2010, which means it opens in the closing months of the 2008 US presidential campaign and runs through the first half of the following administration. Twenty-four charts, fifty-nine sites still link to it.

Are these charts partisan?

Most take a recognisable position, and the archive does not pretend otherwise. The value now is documentary: these are the arguments a large online audience found worth diagramming in 2008 and 2009, drawn while they were still unsettled.

Which chart is about the financial crisis?

Who Benefits Most From The $700,000,000,000.00 Bailout?, from September 2008, published as its own plate. It was drawn within days of the figure entering public argument, and the number in the title is written out in full because the point is the number of zeros.

Why do some entries have no image?

Every original chart image was hosted on a service that now returns an error, so each was recovered from a surviving copy. Where no copy survived, the title, date and address remain as the record.