After the success of our webchat with Shell, and the revealing answers we were given, it is time for the next stage of our campaign to Make Shell Come Clean

Join us as we target Shell on Google Maps, turning Shell stations into ‘hell stations’ to publicly highlight the damage Shell is doing in the Niger Delta (see Amnesty’s report for further details)

We can’t do this without you, so please get involved by taking photos that obscure the S of the Shell sign from view, and sending them to us. Click on one of the logos below to get the idea.

Wherever you are in the world, we want your hell stations!

View Hell stations in a larger map

Task 1: Start snapping those Hell Stations!

Instructions

• Find a Shell station in your area, by searching ‘Shell’ or ‘Shell UK Ltd’ on Google Maps. Alternatively you could use Shell’s own station finder (UK only)
• Use a prop to block the view of the ‘S’ of Shell, as others have done on the map above. Get creative! You could use a friend’s hand, or better still an object that represents your outrage at Shell’s disregard for human rights in the Niger Delta.
• Snap away!

Send them to us

• Simply send an MMS to +44 7733 134670 or amnesty.amnesty@gmail.com with the location of the station, and we’ll do the rest

Task 2: Give Shell stations bad reviews

• Find any Shell station on Google Maps, and give it a one star review, ensuring that your main message is in the first line of the review. It will then show up in searches like this:

Today Amnesty International published its annual death penalty report. To run through the headline statistics; at least 2,390 people were executed in 25 countries last year, which is almost double the number from last year’s report. China executed 72% of these and Belarus is the last country in Europe to use this inhumane punishment. On average, 7 people were executed every day in 2008.

The report itself offers an in-depth view on the numbers of people sentenced to execution and killed throughout the last year. It’s a bank of numbers that provides a snapshot into one aspect of worldwide human rights.

As a webteam, our challenge is translating these statistics, numbers and personal testimony into an engaging piece of content that makes the report accessible and understandable. Our web editor Sam, has spent the last week compiling everything we have; data, actions and videos; into this fantastic google map.

This is a great, and relatively easy, way for us to start displaying some of our most interesting data in a more useful format. Whilst this is a good start, it has also got me thinking about how we can build on this in future.

A simple way to progress would be the creation of more charts and graphs, much like this example from The Independent that breaks a huge amount of data down into three understandable graphics.

With sites such as Daytum emerging, producing attractive graphs such as these is becoming much more realistic for those of us without advanced photoshop or flash skills. Beyond these basic graphs though, I’ve been coming across more and more interactive map-based data visualisations.

Take Breathing Earth for instance. An interactive map that displays real-time C02 emissions as well as birth and death rates, making the scale of the problems our planet is facing instantly more tangible.

Then there are sites like Social Weather Mapping, Informapping or Ushahidi, which take online and user-generated content and place it in context on a map. Each of these sites demonstrates an exciting new way of displaying data, as well as innovating in how that data is collected.

This sort of interactive data visualisation may still be a long way off for us, but it’s something we’re excited about exploring. I’d love to hear what you think of our map, any other examples you know of, or just where you think we should be taking these ideas next…