Hello and welcome to another edition of The Crunch!
In this week’s packed newsletter we have charts on pay in the WNBA, record-breaking ocean heat, how the amount of ingredients is shrinking in some foods, and a chart on who marries whom. We’ve also got a bird of the year update to round it out.
But first a deep dive into far-right Facebook groups …
Our colleagues in the UK have spent a year mapping the immense – and growing – Facebook networks “whose members trade in anti-immigrant sentiment, nativism, conspiracy and misinformation”.
The journalists used artificial intelligence to draw out key themes and spoke to experts about what they found. This is one of those stories where how it was reported is almost as interesting as the story itself – you can read about the methodology here. The Guardian’s principles on generative AI use are here.
Four charts from the fortnight
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1. What’s in our food
After a years-long cost-of-living crisis we’re all pretty familiar with “shrinkflation”. This brilliant ABC story shows that it’s not just the quantity of products like dips and jams that have been changing, but the makeup of them, too.
The ABC analysed the ingredients of thousands of products over a 15-month window and found many where the share of the “main” ingredient had decreased. “While some manufacturers said their changes were to improve the recipe, others said they were due to supply chain cost increases and wanting to keep the price of the product low”. There’s lots more detail and excellent charts here.
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2. A gender pay grand canyon
The WNBA is growing rapidly and setting attendance records. Some teams are reportedly worth 30 times what they were just six years ago, according to this New York Times story. But WNBA players aren’t paid like it – the top players earn just US$250,000 a year.
If WNBA players were paid similarly to NBA players – who receive about 50% of their league’s revenue – the top WNBA players would be making closer to US$3m a year (still orders of magnitude less than what male NBA stars are paid). There’s a bunch of great charts in this story, we really recommend a deep dive.
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3. Illustrative illustrations
It was really hard to pick a graphic to highlight in this ABC story about warming oceans around Australia. It’s just chock full of beautiful illustrations like this one:
The crux is that ocean temperatures in June and July were the highest they’ve been in over a century of data, setting up an “extraordinary” cyclone season, algal blooms, coral bleaching and flooding. Beyond mapping the data, there’s other great illustrations in the story explaining how these environmental processes actually work.
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4. Who marries whom?
Is it really a third chart from the ABC? Yes it is!
The ABC’s digital story innovation team have done a deep dive into the Australian census data around religion and marriage, in a sequel to their earlier piece looking at employment and marriage stats.
According to their analysis, nearly one in three marriages are between people of different denominations or beliefs, and one in five are between people of different religions.
There are some great charts in there, like the chord chart above which shows the proportion of marriages and de facto relationships between people of different (and no) religions. You can also put in details about yourself and your partner to see how common or uncommon your relationship is, though this does sometimes show some strange results with less common demographics in the census.
It’s bird of the year time!
Guardian Australia’s bird of the year vote – confusingly held every second year – is now on. You can vote for the southern cassowary your favourite bird here. Five birds get knocked out every day so remember to vote often.
To help you get into the bird-appreciating spirit, Josh created an illustrated guide (and video) on how to make your own origami bird:
We have also charted the first three rounds, and not surprisingly the tawny frogmouth is well ahead of the flock:
We also wanted to shout out our data team colleague Andy Ball who built, and runs, the whole polling system that underpins the voting. Andy and all our other colleagues involved in the poll this year have done an amazing job!
You can vote here, and otherwise immerse yourself in amazing bird content here.
Bookmarks
Extreme weather is costing Australia three times as much as in the 1990s
Russian drone attacks on Ukraine are becoming larger and more frequent
How heavy rainfall led to a lake bursting in Taiwan
A teardrop-shaped comet is hurtling towards Earth
European basketball stadiums charted with a parabola
Off the Charts
To mark two years on from the 7 October attacks and Israel’s response, graphic designer Valentina D’Efilippo set out to create this chart, painting a dot for every life lost. After 16 hours she only managed half of the reported deaths – 34,000 dots.
You can see more at D’Efilippo’s Instagram, including a video of the process.
Our UK colleagues also published this interactive with some of the names and stories of the more than 18,000 children who have been killed in Gaza.
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