I looked into an e-book called “100 Ways to Please a Romanian Woman”.

The resulting work is here. (Or click on the image below).

Notes: What I was most interested was the second part of our assignment: the presentation of the information once verified/checked/contextualized, and if this can make a difference in retention or changing one’s mind. I was also interested in whether one can turn a seemingly trivial topic (that is also heavily stereotyped in this case) into an opportunity to transmit information or deliver context.

I decided to use Zeega because it plays seamlessly with animated GIFs, which are a staple of our current meme culture, and tried to structure the resulting piece as a listicle, a popular form of content delivery.

As a journalist, I couldn’t help thinking that if I was doing this for publication in a different format (a more “serious” one for lack of a better word), I would have done further checking and contextualizing of the sources (adding caveat to caveat), arguably to a point where it might have bogged down the experience. One potential solution is to provide jumping off points from each of these topics – alcohol consumption, natality figure, religious practices etc – into well-produced and complex platforms where the public can learn more from, while also interacting with the data. (I’m thinking of the work the New York Times has done on upward mobility.)