Original


Source: The Internet Map (2012).


Objective

The visualization shows the enormity in the number of websites of the various countries and their relativeness in terms of impact they create on each other. The visualization is targeted for the audience who is interested in learning the impact of internet on various countries. One can easily notice the big difference in the number of the website created in USA and other countries.

The countries with relative websites have the same colour. According to the author and the referenced research, relative websites try to create an impact on each other in this world of internet. For example, we can easily notice that United States has impact on rich countries like United Kingdom and crude oil suppliers like Saudi Arabia. These impacts can be related to social, political or economic aspects of the countries.

The visualisation chosen had the following main issues:

  • When we compare the sizes of bubbles of India and United States, the sizes of bubbles are quite deceptive as size of United States should be close to 3 times as that of India. But the size of the bubble of USA is definitely more than 3 times that of India.
  • The size of bubble of China is larger than that of India, which is unethical as number of websites in India are more than that of China.
  • The placement and size of China next to USA, creates an impression that China could be 2nd in the running after USA. However, it is 3rd position after India according to the data provided by the author.
  • The author mentions that relative countries, in term of their websites, have same colours. The colour palette selection of Turkey and Mexico or Germany and France are quite similar. However, in the reality after careful scrutiny and going through map provided on the website, they are actually not related. Also, the author mentioned China is coloured yellow or Russia is coloured red. The colour palette selected creates deception in terms of their authenticity.

Reference

  • Enikeev, R.(2012). The Internet Map. Retrieved 20th April, 2020, from The Internet Map website : http://internet-map.net/

Code

The following code was used to fix the issues identified in the original.

library(ggplot2)

Country <- c("Canada","NetherLands","SaudiArabia","Indonesia","Turkey","Poland","Mexico",
            "Iran","Spain","Brazil","Italy","United Kingdom","France","Japan","Russia",
            "Germany","China","India","United States")

Sites_Count <- c(2618,3108,3677,3987,4134,4315,4331,4665,7372,7587,7990,
                9496,11178,13046,17632,18183,31129,36422,96978)

#Create data-frame
Websites <- data.frame(Country,Sites_Count)

#Reconstruct the plot
plot1 <- ggplot(Websites, aes(x = reorder(Country, Sites_Count), y = Sites_Count,fill = Country, label = Sites_Count )) + 
         geom_bar(stat = "identity") + 
         ggpubr::rotate_x_text() + 
         coord_flip() + 
         geom_text(hjust = -0.1)+ 
         theme(legend.position = "none") +
         theme(axis.text = element_text(size = 13), axis.title = element_text(size = 18),                                       plot.title = element_text(size = 20, hjust = 0.5))+
         annotate("text", x = 14, y =75000, label = "Relative Websites            ")+
         annotate("text", x = 13, y =75000, label = "1. U.S. - U.K - Saudi Arabia ")+
         annotate("text", x = 12, y =74990, label = "2. India - Poland                ")+
         annotate("text", x = 11, y =75000, label = "3. China - Brazil - Indonesia")+
         annotate("text", x = 10, y =75000, label = "4. Spain - Netherlands       ")+
         annotate("text", x = 9, y =75000, label =  "5. France - Canada           ")+
         annotate("text", x = 8, y =75000, label =  "6. Iran - Turkey                 ")+
         xlab("Countries")+
         ylab("Number of Websites")+
         ggtitle("The World of Internet")+
         scale_fill_manual("legend", values = c("United States" = "#00CCFF",
                                                "India" = "#33FF00",
                                                "China" = "#FFFF00",
                                                "Germany" = "#000099", 
                                                "Russia" = "#CC0000",
                                                "Japan" = "#FF66CC",
                                                "France" ="#666600",
                                                "United Kingdom" = "#00CCFF",
                                                "Italy" = "#0033FF", 
                                                "Brazil" = "#FFFF00", 
                                                "Spain" = "#993300", 
                                                "Iran" = "orange", 
                                                "Mexico" = "#003333",
                                                "Poland" = "#33FF00", 
                                                "Turkey" = "orange", 
                                                "Indonesia" = "#FFFF00",
                                                "SaudiArabia" = "#00CCFF",
                                                "NetherLands" = "#993300", 
                                                "Canada" = "#666600"))

Data Reference

  • Enikeev, R.(2012). The Internet Map. Retrieved 20th April, 2020, from The Internet Map website : http://internet-map.net/

Reconstruction

The following horizontal bar plot fixes the main issues in the original.

The below mentioned aspects correct the issues in the original:

  • The proportion of websites for each country is rectified in terms of their lengths.
  • Arranging the countries in the descending order of their websites made India to move 2nd position and its length is more than China.
  • The color palette selection for countries is more distinct. Also, the countries with relative websites have same colour.
  • The annotations provided in text format also support the colour of the relativeness of the countries and its websites.