"Gathering, filtering and visualizing what is happening beyond what the eye can see has a growing value. The orange juice you drink in the morning, the coffee you brew — in today’s global economy there are invisible connections between these products, other people and you. The language of this network is data: little points of information that are often not relevant in a single instance, but massively important when viewed from the right angle."
"Data analysis can provides us with a new camera." (David McCandless).
"When information was scarce, most of our efforts were devoted to hunting and gathering. Now that information is abundant, processing is more important."
"A visual analysis of a new dataset feels like an exciting journey to an unknown country. You start as a foreigner with just the data and your assumptions, but with every step you make, with every chart you render, you get new insights about the topic. Based on those insights you make decisions for your next steps and what issues are worth further investigation." Source: Data Journalism Handbook
"There is a mistake technical and scientific people make. We think that if we have made a clever and thoughful argument, based on data and smart analysis, then people will change their minds. This isn't true. If you want to change people's behaviour, you need to touch their hearts, not just win the argument. We call this the Oprah Winfrey rule." – Eric Schmidt, How Google works Source: Data Journalism Handbook
With Data Journalism, we're moving a little bit away from that. Good journalism, especially the long-form one, used to tell us an story that brought us to laugh, to cry, to be upset – to have emotions. With data, we see the overview and we can make better decisions, but these are not based on emotions.
"Ultimately, data visualization is about communicating an idea that will drive action." Source
What can data vis do?
- Education
- Exploration --> exploratory data analysis (EDA) through visualization, e.g. finding patterns
- Confirmation (of a set of assumptions)
- Build helpful beliefs about the world
- Confirm a set of assumptions
- Destroy a set of false assumptions which is build up through anecdotal evidence
- understand a statement fast
- see a trend
- seeing is faster than reading
- powerful cognitive advantage: fully half of the human brain is devoted to processing visual information. When you present a user with an information graphic, you are reaching them through the mind’s highest-bandwidth pathway. Even after you’ve stopped looking it, a good data vis gets into your head and leaves a lasting mental model of a fact, trend or process.
- give the reader an overview where he is
- e.g. the bike tour around the wall, where you had the overview where you are)
- let the user understand a complex topic
- eg. see the data for ALL people)
- very close to the 2nd point
- form a new story with showing data
- investigative journalism, close to (social) science
- John Snow Cholera map
- Enable a reader to discover information that is personally relevant
- NYT Unemployment chart http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/11/06/business/economy/unemployment-lines.html
- What number are you? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15391515
---- ### Forms of Data Journalism | Form | Example | | -- | -- | | Measurement | ‘Local councils across the country spent a total of £x billion on paper clips last year’ | | Proportion | ‘Last year local councils spent two-thirds of their stationery budget on paper clips’ | | Internal comparison | ‘Local councils spend more on paper clips than on providing meals-on-wheels for the elderly’ | | External comparison | ‘Council spending on paper clips last year was twice the nation’s overseas aid budget’ | | Change over time | ‘Council spending on paper clips has trebled in the past four years’ | | League tables’ | ‘Oxford Council spends more on paper clips for each member of staff than any other local authority, at a rate four times the national average’| | Analysis by categories | ‘Councils run by the Purple Party spend 50% more on paper clips than those controlled by the Yellow Party’ | | Association | ‘Councils run by politicians who have received donations from stationery companies spend more on paper clips, with spending increasing on average by £100 for each pound donated’ |