I looked through the cards on vox about the war in Syria. It was presented clearly and in a way that helped put individual events into the context of the entire situation. Even though it was about 15 slides long, it felt fairly short. I think that came from how concepts were simple and direct. Perhaps it’s just because I chose to dive into cards on an incredibly complex crisis, but I felt like a lot of facts were mentioned in a short period of time, making it slightly difficult to retain. Because of that, I felt like this particular stack of cards is better to be viewed as a resource to occasionally consult when clarification is needed, rather than as a source you can read once and completely understand.
I like how at the very beginning, the cards gave a brief history of Syria, particularly how French imperialists created the nation’s borders and grouped together ethnically and religiously diverse sets of people. This key piece of background information probably isn’t going to be found in a breaking news story on the civil war or the refugee crisis. Something I didn’t know much about was the Hama massacre in 1982, where the regime learned that “mass violence was the smart response to unrest.” I thought that was a crucial component to understand the current issues in Syria.
After also flipping through some other topics, I like the idea of vox card stacks. It’s simple and easy to use. For me, the best part is that it’s dived into short segments. Sometimes it’s easy to get lost or click away from one page where you have to scroll forever. I also like how the cards incorporated plenty of hyperlinks in case you want to find more information.