Let's Talk About Nuance: Unpacking Data Presented on Social Media
Text reads "Bristol Is the Most Racially Segregated City In the UK" with annotations drawn on the text.
Creative Practice Coordinator Eli explores a recent statement made on Rising's Instagram.
Social media is a tricky thing. We've become very accustomed to seeing information presented quickly and cleanly, in an "easy to understand" format. At the time of writing this, Instagram has become a hub for people across the world to share resources about defunding the police, prison abolition, #BlackLivesMatter, unionising, human rights, the crisis in Yemen, and more. Graphic designers and illustrators are flexing their muscles and producing beautiful infographics, comics and multi-image masterposts about Why You Should Be Angry and What To Do About It. It feels exciting—and useful.
But it also collides with another issue that the internet continues to battle with: the necessity of ensuring all data and information always comes properly cited and contextualised. And we are not immune.
Last week, we shared the image below, reading "Bristol is the most racially segregated city in the UK".
It blew up—more than any other post we've ever made on Instagram before. The reaction was strong. Some people replied with variants on "🔥🔥🔥🔥"; some disagreed wholeheartedly with the premise—the very idea—that Bristol could be at all racist/divided; and some called for greater clarity or citation.
When we posted the image, we included the following caption, drawing from the source that we named as "Runnymede, 2017".
▪️Ethnic minorities in Bristol experience greater disadvantage than in England and Wales as a whole in education and employment and this is particularly so for Black African people.⠀
▪️There was a decrease in the proportion of young people with no educational qualifications in Bristol, for all ethnic groups, between 2001 and 2011.⠀
▪️ Black African young people are persistently disadvantaged in education compared to their White peers.⠀
▪️ Addressing educational inequalities requires attention to: the unrepresentativeness of the curriculum, lack of diversity in teaching staff and school leadership and poor engagement with parents.⠀
▪️Bristol was ranked 55th for employment inequality between White British and ethnic minorities.⠀
▪️People from Black African (19%), Other (15%) and Black Caribbean (12.7%) groups had persistently high levels of unemployment.⠀
▪️Almost all ethnic minority groups in Bristol experience employment inequality when compared to White British people.⠀
▪️In order to tackle employment inequality both recruitment processes and office culture need to be revised. ⠀
-- RUNNYMEDE REPORT 2017 #whosefuture
While it initially seemed okay to us (a team of people who have been neck-deep in reports and data like this for the last four years), we've realised there's a problem here. We didn't do enough work to tie our statement ("Bristol is the most racially segregated city in the UK") to the data we presented in the caption. We didn't connect the dots. And we apologise.
So, we want to clarify the journey we took between reading the source materials and posting on Instagram.
Up front, here are our sources.
Next, our thought process. Each element has been drawn out to correlate to a part of the original statement.
1. "CITY IN THE UK": THE REPORTS
This information came from the 2017 Runnymede Report (Bristol: A City Divided?) and the 2017 Local Ethnic Inequalities Report [Runnymede] which used data from the 2001 & 2011 census. This table ranked DISTRICTS in the UK by “multiple inequalities” [explained in point #3 below].
Bristol is 7th, but above it are Lambeth (London Borough), Haringey (London Borough), Rotherham (large minster town, Yorkshire), Oldham (large town, Greater Manchester), Tower Hamlets (London Borough) and Brent (London Borough).
Bristol is the first “City of” to appear on the list, in 7th place.
2. "CITY IN THE UK": WHAT ARE CORE CITIES?
Some of the narrative around this report listed Bristol as the most segregated “Core City” which has caused some confusion. Being a “Core City” is a title assigned by Core Cities UK.
The Core Cities are Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield.
Of these cities, according to the Runnymede report, Bristol is the most segregated according to the Index of Multiple Inequality [Runnymede].
3. "MOST RACIALLY SEGREGATED": THE METRICS
The metric used to rank the districts was the “Index of Multiple Inequality”. This index takes each district’s ranking on inequality in education, employment, health and housing and then draws an average.
When averaging across the rankings of education, employment, health and housing, Bristol is the CITY that ranks HIGHEST on this index [see point #1 for the districts that rank above it].
Data is complicated, and there is a reason that complex information isn’t solely distributed on social media. We acknowledge that the statement we made was very strong, and elicited an equally strong reaction.
Many of you asked for further citations, called for nuance, and made clarifications: we really appreciate that—it’s very important to interrogate information presented boldly online.
We apologise for not being more clear. In the future, we will be as upfront as we can about our methodologies and sources, and we encourage you to do the same! We hope that this clarification helps.
We do not, however, apologise for the sentiment of the statement. We stand by that.