Data Journalism

Dr. Nathaniel Cline

Agenda

1

Narratives and practices

2

Genre

3

A New Tool

Narratives and practices

Most our readings for today came from the

Data Journalism Handbook

A super useful resource

What makes data journalism different to the rest of journalism? Perhaps it is the new possibilities that open up when you combine the traditional ‘nose for news’ and ability to tell a compelling story, with the sheer scale and range of digital information now available.

Ways of communicating data: Narrate

Some simple rules:

• Use ratios instead of percents

• Counts of 10 (6 of 10, 4 of 10)

• If a ratio doesn’t make sense, round (There’s 287,401 people in Lincoln, according to the Census Bureau. It’s easier, and no less accurate, to say there’s more than 287,000 people in Lincoln)

Ways of communicating data: Narrate

But more important is the prinicple that we need to give numbers meaning:

• Give context (more or less than usual?)

• Manageable quantities

Ways of communicating data: Socialize

• Can socialize the obtaining of data

• Can also leverage social dynamics

  • quizzes,

  • sharing,

  • competition,

  • etc..

Ways of communicating data: Humanize

Avoiding the “scoreboard” reporting of gun deaths

Further thoughts here

Ways of communicating data: Personalize

• Online formats allow uber personalization of data stories

• Can also invite users to make their own decisions

Ways of communicating data: Utilize

Create “tools” based on the data:

• calculators
• GPS tools
• “you draw it”
• etc…

Essentially the “interactives” we’ve referenced before

Story forms

Genre

Genre

“Genre represents an unspoken agreement between the [creator] and the reader about what to expect… [they] also influence what is included in or excluded from a story… a hard news story will not contain comments by the author.”
- Broersma (2008)

News Story Formats

Online Genres

Online forms have given rise to genres are being defined by users

Examples of Genres

• Listicles

• Twitter threads

• Instagram “stories”

• Memes

• Explainers

• podcasts

• Longform

• YouTube-native (unboxing, walkthroughs)

• Livestreams

Thinking about genre: Scrollytelling

• Snow Fall

  • (“If we were to redo ‘Snow Fall’ today,” he said, “we’d have new techniques, we’d be using faster devices and it would be a mobile-first story.”)

• Upward Mobility

New tool

Shorthand

• There are a number of apps that can build “scrollytelling” and other interactives, most are paid

  • note you could do some of this in R!

• Shorthand is fun and lets you create a story for free

Practice

• Sign up for Shorthand, create a new story and select the “infographics” template

• What elements of the genre does this template include?