CV-33 - Narrative and Storytelling
Maps are powerful storytellers. Maps have a long history combining spatial relations with cartographic language to locate, analyze, ground, and express stories told across time and space. Today, “story maps” are increasingly visible in cartography, GIScience, digital humanities, data visualization, and journalism due to the volume of available data and increasingly accessible mapping tools. Perhaps, most importantly, maps present world views and much larger (often hidden) stories or “meta-narratives.” These underlying stories often emerge from dominant perspectives that are deeply informed by power structures like racism, patriarchy, ableism, etc. and further generate uneven geographies. Attention to power in narrative and storytelling reveals and gives voice to alternative storylines and perspectives that can be woven together across time and space. In this entry, I introduce multiple conceptualizations of maps and stories from cartography and data journalism to feminist mapping, Black geographies, and decolonial mapping to illustrate the power of narrative and storytelling in mapping. I argue that understanding the power of narrative and storytelling in mapping is an essential skillset for students and professionals alike.
CV-12 - Multivariate Mapping
Bivariate and multivariate maps encode two or more data variables concurrently into a single symbolization mechanism. Their purpose is to reveal and communicate relationships between the variables that might not otherwise be apparent via a standard single-variable technique. These maps are inherently more complex, though offer a novel means of visualizing the nuances that may exist between the mapped variables. As information-dense visual products, they can require considerable effort on behalf of the map reader, though a thoughtfully-designed map and legend can be an interesting opportunity to effectively convey a comparative dimension.
This chapter describes some of the key types of bivariate and multivariate maps, walks through some of the rationale for various techniques, and encourages the reader to take an informed, balanced approach to map design weighing information density and visual complexity. Some alternatives to bivariate and multivariate mapping are provided, and their relative merits are discussed.