Students Develop R Shiny Apps for Interactive Data Visualizations

As part of the class Data Journalism with R in the winter term 2023-24, students in the media BA and MA programs have created a set of interactive web-based apps to visualize and make accessible a range of datasets on different socioeconomic issues. These apps are based on R shiny and make it possible to interrogate quantitative information in a variety of ways.

The app Illicit drug trade and usage in Europe by Kira Pollmann visualizes data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction. The app aims to show data on a variety of illicit drugs both concerning recent seizure amounts as well as prices and usage and lets one compare different European countries.

The app Unadjusted Gender Pay Gap 2018 in Germany by Lilly Kiefer visualizes data from “Verdienststrukturerhebung 2018” (economic wage data 2018) by the Research data centre of the Federal and State Statistical Offices in Germany. It allows us to see the gross hourly income gaps betwenn men and women by different factors such as age, level of education, professional position and economic sector.

The app Socioeconomic view of Mercosur countries by Natália Scalzaretto visualizes economic data from Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay provided by the R package Gapminder. This app shows the evolution of wealth (GDP per capita) and life expectancy in those four countries during 55 years. Although we cannot establish a correlation between the variables, it is interesting to observe they both grew in parallel.

The app Family Composition Analysis by Ammarah Imran visualizes data from Eurostat studying Percentage of employed adults working at home by sex, age groups, number of children and age of youngest child. The visualisation gives an opportunity to understand the amount of time spent by each working individual at home with their children. Through adding data regarding each individual’s number of children and their ages it is understood the amount of time they need to spend.

The app Time Trend of Terrorist Attacks in the EU (1970-2021) by Alessa Eggeling visualizes data from the Global Terrorism Database. The app focuses on the comparative presentation of terrorist attacks over time in the EU countries. It also allows the data to be broken down by attack type, target type and perpetrator group for selected countries and years. Thereby the app provides an overview of the number, type and actors involved in terrorist attacks in the EU in recent years.