Visual Exploration of the Financial Lobby
An explorable map of Germany's financial lobby for Finanzwende — who comments, who testifies, and how they are connected.
When Germany regulates its financial markets, certain voices are always in the room. For the citizen movement Finanzwende, I worked with data journalist Lorenz Matzat on »Visuelle Erkundung der Aktivitäten der Finanzlobby«, an interactive exploration of the financial lobby’s activities, making a complex influence network legible for a general audience.
The data covers 34 meetings of the Bundestag Finance Committee and 33 speaker drafts related to financial-market legislation between 2014 and 2020: which associations and companies submitted comments and statements, and how they are connected to one another.
At the center sits a force-directed graph, built with d3, that lets the network form itself — node sizes and colors single out the most influential actors, while the layout keeps the overall picture simple and approachable. Bar charts count the comments and statements per actor, and a treemap lays out the hierarchy of associations and companies behind them.
The visualizations are built with d3 and embedded via Observable, so they live directly inside the article — a tool for readers to explore the world of financial lobbying in Germany on their own terms.
