Fact Check Viz: Behind the Scenes

Data Extraction

• Import.io 'Crawler' to scrape tabular data from Politifact.

Data Scrubbing

• A calculated field to format text as dates
• Parsed out the fact check ruling from the 'Truth-o-Meter' image URL and assigned them a numerical value from -3 to 3

Data Visualization - Tableau

• Simple Design: Analyzing only two candidates makes it easy for the user to quickly draw comparisons and dig into the data and hopefully not be too overwhelmed or saturated in analysis.

• Mobile layout: Tableau10 and its new 'Device Layout' feature allowed for the mobile responsiveness. The mobile layout actually surfaces two completely different sheets than the desktop layout. The mobile versions exist on the desktop layout, but are made small and unnoticeable at the bottom of the dashboard.

• Search Topics: A wildcard parameter and filter is used in combination to bring about the search function. This discussion forum post describes the method.

• Choose Your Own Adventure: The interactive user experience I envisioned was the following...

  • Step 1: Click a square in the top viz to filter and drill down to those particular fact checks in the table below.
  • Step 2: Explore the lower table of fact checks.
  • Step 3: Click a statement row to navigate to the Politifact article where you can read further details on a particular fact check.

• Tweak, Test, Repeat: I don't even want to know how many times I made minor adjustments to the viz before I was satisfied with the design and user experience on both desktop and mobile layouts.
  Lesson learned: building a viz for both a mobile and desktop platform is quite possibly 3x the work and hopefully the same in views.