#Metoo in China

Partner with Grace Kwon
Role: Researcher & Data Visualization Designer



Visualize the landscape or the context around #MeToo through data modeling. Demonstrate why visualizing #MeToo matters by gathering and communicating a design solution in visual, physical, and material form.

Testing Our Assumptions
through Visualization

China is known for controlling the news. Many know it but can’t really see it happening. To visualize it, we collected images from People’s Daily, a prominent Chinese government-owned news portal, to analyze how China controlls the news. Images collected from August to October proves the newspaper uses colors in different ways to send different messages to the Chinese public versus English readers.

Blue pictures are about military power, industrial growth, and diplomatic refutes of what the international community thinks of China .

Mapping The History to The Problem

To dig deeper we mapped out the history of the internet control to China. We saw that the government takes three main approaches in controlling the online media.
1. Delete
2. Ban
3. Warnings and Threats

Mapping Public Response to The Control - #Metoo

At the beginning of 2018, #MeToo was widely spread throughout many of the Chinese social medias. Through researching and mapping the data, it was evident that: People can never be silenced.

A Possible Solution

To give power back to people, we wanted to create a platform that archives the history and progression of social media movements. To keep the momentum going, even in the midst of frequent interventions from the government, we wanted to design 4. A Possible Solution a website that provides real-time information on how to create new hashtags. Theusers will see trending topics on current social issues and will be able to view different ways on how to avoid censorship

In the search engine, users can type in and search for hashtags that are censored.

The top trending hashtags will be diaplayed under the search box on the home page in real-time.

After typed in the hashtag, the user will be able to see the related news. At the bottom, there is a real-time statistics refers to the hashtag on each social platforms.

The user will also be able to see how the hashtag evolved.

At the right bottom is a map of the evolution of the social movement or campaign related to that hashtag.

Click on the message box, user can learn about ways people developed to avoiding censorship in this movement for past, now, and future reference.