[ATTW-L] NTAC report on mass attacks

[Dragga, Sam]

For a pertinent example of a research report, consider Mass Attacks in Public Spaces, 2016-2020 from the National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC) of the U.S. Secret Service. The 70-page report offers information and analysis about 173 attacks and 180 attackers, with explanations divided in bullet points and reinforced with statistical illustrations (tables, bar graphs, circle graphs, infographics) and topical photographs.

The report is available at https://www.secretservice.gov/sites/default/files/reports/2023-01/usss-ntac-maps-2016-2020.pdf. It offers multiple opportunities for discussion of rhetoric, ethics, and information design on a tragic issue in the news again and again and again and again.

For example, a particularly noteworthy statistic is mentioned in text (on page 19) but without the emphasis of a corresponding adjacent illustration: 96% of the perpetrators were male.  (This statistic is included in a summary table of demographic details on page 57.) It’s a statistic that implies obvious but unexamined solutions.

Sam

Sam Dragga
Professor Emeritus
Texas Tech University
sam.dragga at ttu.edu
1-806-543-6099

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://attw.org/pipermail/attw-l_attw.org/attachments/20230125/1e14c3da/attachment-0001.htm>