Monday, August 18, 2014

The Ferguson Story Map


The Washington Post has created a story map plotting the major events in Ferguson since the killing of Michael Brown.

The Angry Aftermath of the Missouri Shooting maps the protests, looting and other events that have hit Ferguson following the shooting of the unarmed teenager. You can navigate the map by selecting the categorized markers on the map or you can follow the story chronologically by simply scrolling down the page.

The map itself was created with the Leaflet mapping platform. If you are interested in creating your own Leaflet narrative map in this form you might find my How to Create a Story Map with Leaflet post useful. In this tutorial (and in the demo map) I explain how you can create a similar visualization to this Washington Post map using Waypoints.js and the Leaflet mapping platform.


Al Jazerra's has created a map visualizing the racial mix in Ferguson in an attempt to try to shine some light on the background behind the shooting of Michael Brown and the resulting protests.

St Louis, A Divided City uses 2012 census data to plot the main racial groups in each census tract area in the city. The map reveals that two of the northern tracts in Ferguson have an evenly distributed racial mix of whites and African Americans, while the tracts in the south have a far higher proportion of African Americans.

Al Jazerra claims that as '... more black residents moved in, whites in Ferguson began to move to outer suburbs'. They also say that the 'majority of law enforcement and local government officials are still white in Ferguson'.


Reddit has a live feed of news of the looting and protests in Ferguson. The Live Feed for Riot and Protest in Ferguson, MO. uses Tweets, scanner reports and other sources to provide first hand accounts of the developing situation.

The live feed is accompanied by a Google Maps Engine map of the incidents reported. The map sidebar organizes the incidents added by date. If you scroll down on the sidebar you can find the latest incidents added to the map.

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