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Dystopian Books Again Seize Power

Page history last edited by Cassandra Nguyen 9 years, 4 months ago

Research Report

 

By Cassie Nguyen, Team 7: Dystopian Novel Project

 

     In light of the movie release of Hunger Games, Goodreads, a popular website for sharing, recommending, and reviewing books, compiled and released an info graphic entitled “Dystopian Books Again Seize Power.” The info graphic consists of graphs and charts mapping the commonalities and statistics of dystopian novels in order to understand the socio-historical elements surrounding the explosion of interest in dystopian novels unforeseen in 50 years. Patrick Brown, the director of author marketing at Goodreads, accesses and analyzes statistics gathered from Goodread’s user reviews and aesthetically presents his findings on the evolution of the dystopian genre in a manner that visually entices and interests viewers. The three representational graphs amass and plot data in an illustrative manner to allow readers to draw insights and make sense of the recent spike in popularity of the dystopian genre.

 

     The info graphic and its accompanying graphs seek to draw meaningful conclusions about the popularity of the “new wave of books” categorized as dystopian literature to probe the contributing factors behind the success of Hunger Games and similar Young Adult dystopian fiction.  Brown extracts data and statistics from the user reviews of the GoodReads website and organizes this information to reach meaningful conclusions. The info graphic is a prime example of the use of data visualization in order to convey complex information in a visually appealing, understandable aesthetic.

 

 The first visualization is a line graph mapping the publication years, starting from 1920 to 2010 and the percentage of books categorized as Dystopian out of all book in the GoodReads corpus. This graph allows the viewer to see the rise and falls of the publication of books categorized as dystopian against all books of that year. The graph also labels the years that World War II, The Cold War, and 9/11 occur on the axis of years in order to examine correlations between such events to any outstanding trends in the publications of dystopian literature. There are significant spikes in books being categorized as dystopian in the years prior and after these events, thus revealing tragic events strongly show causality to the rise of dystopian texts.

     The next visualization is a survey of thirteen popular dystopian novels divided into time frames modeled under an ideological or social context that these novels shared and encompassed in their works.  Each book is represented with a picture of its book cover, with the title and year of publication printed  alongside, as well as visual icons that correspond to “a handy key.” This key contains symbols representing elements of the dystopian genre that can be mapped next to each corresponding book for easy reference to its dystopian qualities.  This technique of representing dystopian elements as visual objects and plotting them across a series of novels for comparison allows the reader to quickly assess commonalities between the novels. Assessing the similarities of dystopian works within these time frames allows one to see the inspirations and overall shared qualities that encompassed these novels and perhaps made them so popular or relevant to its audience. This revealed that clusters of novels from a similar time period evince and draw inspiration from the socio-political climate it is composed within and respond to social and cultural concerns of the time.

 

 

     

     Lastly, Brown includes a bar graph plotting seven books and their ratings on Goodreads in order to show compare the significantly highest rated book, George Orwell’s 1984 to Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games, the second highest rated book trailing very closely behind. The positive ratings of The Hunger Games as compared to Orwell’s 1984 reveal that readers are comparing the quality of discourse of this young adult book to Orwell’s popular classic. The infographic then ends by probing the idea of what the next possible trend in dystopian literature will be which prompts the audience to wonder what the next dystopian trend will stem from.

     The dystopian info graphic provides an effective basis of representing the patterns that will be found in the dystopian novel project. It is a powerful example of the use of data visualization to abstract information and findings in a schematic, aesthetically appealing form. By using its database of reader reviews from the Goodreads site, Brown was able to organize a large amount of information and make sense of it by using graphics and charts that were understandable.  These charts provided a well-organized, graphical basis for modeling findings done through tools reminiscent of those used in distant reading to draw meaning conclusions.  The portrayal of data through data visualization, also called information design, will allow the Dystopian novel project to display quantitative information quickly and effectively to its audience. It will also lead to the detection of suggestive patterns or trends that will uncover more conclusions surrounding the dystopian genre through the approach of distant reading. This lends functionality to project, as its main goals are to observe and analyze dystopian books across a span of time to map the evolution of discourse and what it can reveal about the audience and time period.

      One limitation surrounding the use of graphs in information graphics is that one may not have such data to access. For example, in the info graphic from GoodReads, Brown was able to comment on categories such as the percentage of books being categorized as dystopian by Goodreads members, which gender liked the book better based on positive reviews on the site separated by gender, and the ratings of these books based on Goodreads' own personal method of measuring ratings. Because of the lack of time and resources needed to assess such a large, disorganized pool of reviews from such a site, we are limited in being able to measure categories such as those mentioned. However, drawing conclusions through other accessible information and using the same methods of mapping and graphing to draw conclusions from such available evidence easily resolves this issue.  

 

 

Resources for further study:

 

Fajbikova, Veronica. An Argument for Popularity of Dystopia. Diss. Central European U, 2014. n.p., n.d.Print 

Sturgis, Amy. “Not Your Parent’s Dystopia.” Reason. n.p., October 2014. Web. 23 November 2014.

 

Roberts, Shauna. “World Fantasy Con: Why Do Teens Read Dystopian Fiction?” Novel Spaces. 6 November 2011. Web. 23 November 2014.

 

"YA Distopias (Infographic)." Feed Me Books Now. n.p., n.d. Web 23 Nov. 2014

 

 

 

 

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