Visualisation...making data more interesting?

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is great data visualisation worth?

Earlier in the week, I got to learn about the work of a campaign collective called Tactical Tech. They do lots of really interesting things (do have a look at the tools they produce to help digital campaigners in the global south) but the project that really got me thinking was their REVEAL programme which looks to turn data into visualisations that the public can engage with.

The vision for the work is simple;
Tactical Tech's Reveal Programme helps rights advocates make sense of data, focus its use on their issue, and produce clear, compelling and accurate visualisations which actually strengthen their campaigning.

In my experience lots of campaigning organisations have a long history of collecting data and writing great policy reports packed full of graphs and charts, but they're often read by a small number of people. At the same time in the UK, both local councils and Whitehall are rushing to make data sets available and I'm sure its packed full of information that’d be invaluable to campaigners. But to most people, the traditional graphs produced from data like this can often be impenetrable and hard to understand.

The folk at Tactical Tech have a vision of turning that into something that is far more accessible and engaging, built on a belief that when people interact with information, they're much more likely to remember and act upon it than when we passively look at a table or graph. What's more by turning data into visualisations, it doesn't discredit the process of research but strengthens it by reaching more people and allowing them to draw conclusions from it.

This case study of how they produced Anti-Slavery International's Products of Slavery website is a great example, and tells how they turned a 194 page report with 2000+ references from the US into something far more accessible.

Do others see the value in this? Have you seen other good use of visualisation by campaigners?