By Josh Neufeld | Originally appeared on Journalist’s Resource
Per a mandate in the United States Constitution, the U.S. has conducted a decennial census in every year ending in “0” since 1790. In other words, the census is nothing new — but that doesn’t mean it isn’t newsy. The 2020 census will bring a bevy of firsts. It’ll be the first census that allows all U.S. households to respond online. It’ll be the first conducted in the era of widespread social media. It’ll be the first to allow responses in Arabic, French, Haitian Creole, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese and Tagalog. And it’s the inspiration for Journalist’s Resource first foray into comics journalism.
Journalist’s Resource is a project of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center and the Carnegie-Knight Initiative. Its primary goal is helping journalists improve their work by relying more often on scientific evidence and high-quality, peer-reviewed research.
This week, nonfiction cartoonist Josh Neufeld guides us through several issues to watch for as the 2020 census gets underway — including the risk of undercounts, the potential ramifications of an inaccurate count, the threat of misinformation and disinformation campaigns, and important dates on the census calendar. Please check out our first piece of graphic nonfiction, which includes cartoon cameo appearances by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross.
This piece is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. See the original story here.