In USA Today’s graphic “USA’s shift from rural to urban,” the first thing that came to mind was: well, duh. Although 21% of the nation still lives in a rural area, I believe that it is a well known fact that urban living has been on the rise since 1920. The graphic however does do a good job in emphasizing the steady incline that the statistics have taken from 1920 to the 2000’s. The author uses little cowboy and business woman animations for visual supplementation, in case any of the readers out their needed this aid.
The most important thing about this graphic is to show the decline of the rural population; 49% in 1920, 37% in 1960 and 21% in 2000. Supplied with the contrary, the incline of the urban living, it shows the viewer that 79% of the United States population is in this category. The kitschy theme does give more of a visual appeal than any old bar graph, but it gives off more of a casual tone. The two characters shown on this graph also demonstrate a trend that has risen since the 20’s; the urban, career driven animation is a black woman, and the farmer is a white male. It makes it as if this graph has a dual message, although not clearly stated. Women, specifically black women have been given more opportunities in the business world than the early 1900’s.
USA Today is known for their use of color and reporting on irrelevant stories, and it did seem that this graph was random. When in the news category and you can either choose “what small perks workers want” or “USA’s shift from rural to urban,” it seemed clear that this had more news value. I think the graphic means to educate readers on the large percentage of the population who live in urban areas, if they have been hiding under a rock for a while.
Stephanie Orlowski
I agree with you that this is a very vague graph. It only gives percentages for 3 different years, and there are 40 years in between each. What about the years in between? That information is just as valuable (if you can call it that) as the other years.
ReplyDeleteThe main thing that I noticed about this graph though is the fact that it stops at the year 2000. That was 10 years ago, and if this graph wants to be current, it should give the statistics up to the current time. There is no sense of timeliness without it, since we're well past the year 2000.