Jo Di, the famous Greek infographic artist, has abruptly gone off the radar. His accounts on Facebook, twitter and his personal site have all come down without any explanation as to why.  


“Page not found” 

Jo Di, who is a dentist and based in Groningen, Holland, earned a reputation for his sharp-edged and caustic infographics mocking the political ongoings in Greece where he comes from. Infographics, he has said, was a hobby but he took it up for a living last January after becoming unemployed.

His inspiration is predominantly drawn from the wheelings and dealings between the political establishment, the media and business interests – widely considered the scourge of modern Greek society. His work is described as ‘graphics of resistance’.

While being above all a satirist, in his graphics he visualizes information based on data provided by credible news sources.


 

Talking to popaganda.gr (link in Greek) earlier this year, he said that deputy Prime Minister Evangelos Venizelos was the politician who inspired him the most.

“This man (Venizelos) inspires me.His personality, his behaviour, even his looks invite satire,” he said.

His latest offering (in Greek) before he vanished from the web dealt with the alleged collusion between Greek shipping magnate and owner of Olympiacos FC, Evangelos Marinakis and publisher Nikos Chatzinikolaou, co-owner of ‘Real’, one of the country’s biggest media groups comprising newspapers, a radio station, a news website and a popular political talk show on commercial TV.


Jo Di's last chart before his website was taken down and Twitter/FB accounts got deleted.

Jo di based his graphic on a post in news site Makeleio (link in Greek) and more specifically leaks of telephone and sms conversations that were part of wiretaps allowed by an investigative judge in charge of a football match-fixing probe – between the two men, Marinakis is heard giving Chatzinikolaou instructions to write a story in order to pressure MP Dora Bakoyanni – a former conservative Athens mayor and sister of Administrative Reform Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis – to return to New Democracy.  

According to the leaked prosecution documents posted on Makeleio, Chatzinikolaou agreed, saying ‘I will call her and I will warn her that if she doesn’t join New Democracy she will be up against me’.
Then he is quoted as saying: ‘Because of these wankers, we will end up with Tsipras [Syriza leader] in power.’

Nikos Chatzinikolaou, in his morning radio show on Monday, vehemently refuted the allegation that he had under-the-table dealings with Marinakis. He claimed that the wiretaps in question are illegal because their content has nothing to do with the football probe and that, secondly,  the excerpts in question, while true, had been edited.

[Read here TPPI’s Special Report ‘The alleged corruption of Evangelos Marinakis and the press that refuses to report on it’]

In a rare interview to ERT WebTv  (in Greek) earlier this year,  Jo Di said the main motivation behind his work is ‘injustice’.

“There are many reason you can find in Greece to react to… but the main one is the injustice over the past years,” he said.

“Electronic resistance, or as some would say, mockingly, ‘resistance from your computer or couch’ has many disadvantages but if you combine it with your physical presence in actions and movements then it is the ideal recipe necessary today.”

In what appears to be a spoof letter posted on the Pitsirikos (in Greek) satirical blog, Jo Di allegedly explained his disappearance on winning the lottery and his decision to retire on the  island of Barbuda in the Caribbean, adding it had nothing to do with “ threats from CHatzinikolaou and Marinakis…”. Asked by a twitter user Tuesday, Mr Chatzinikolaou said he didn’t know of the existence of the Jo Di Graphics webpage until that very day.

Since Jo Di’s disappearance, social media have been bustling with questions by users, with many of them alleging censorship, under the hashtags #free_jodi and #free_jodi2014. Queried by ThePressProject, a person who knows him said that he is “in good health” but offered no further explanation. The only fact that remains is that Jo Di’s digital existence fell off the face of the earth.

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