Journalism, data and storytelling: navigating the battlefield
•
2 j'aime•413 vues
Data journalism promises to offer a more factual, objective picture of the world — but to what extent can we fulfil that promise? How can storytelling techniques be useful in engaging audiences with factual data — and what risks do they hold? Drawing on a decade’s experiences as a data journalist, academic and author, Paul Bradshaw will discuss the decisions that data journalists take when telling stories with data, and how an awareness of narrative techniques and critical issues in the field can create better journalism. Keynote at University of Cambridge - Cambridge Digital Humanities Data School June 2019
Recommandé
Recommandé
Contenu connexe
Tendances
Tendances (20)
Similaire à Journalism, data and storytelling: navigating the battlefield
Similaire à Journalism, data and storytelling: navigating the battlefield (20)
Plus de Paul Bradshaw
Plus de Paul Bradshaw (20)
Dernier
Dernier (20)
Journalism, data and storytelling: navigating the battlefield
- 1. @PaulBradshaw, Birmingham City University, BBC Author: Scraping for Journalists, Finding Stories in Spreadsheets, Data Journalism Heist, Online Journalism Handbook Journalism, data + narrative
- 4. Spoiler alert! ● Why storytelling shouldn’t be abandoned ● How storytelling shapes what we do as (data) journalists ● How to use narrative responsibly
- 5. Paul Bradshaw, Data Journalism Handbook http://datajournalismhandbook.org/1.0/en/introduction_0.html
- 7. Act I: How storytelling shapes what we do
- 9. “1. Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth “7. Journalism must strive to keep the significant interesting and relevant” Kovach & Rosenstiel (2007) The elements of journalism
- 10. So crime & terrorism stories... “...Use news values that favour conflict over clarity and opinion over explanation. “The desire ... to tell a story may end up so disregarding statistical patterns that they end up misinforming our view of the world.” Cushion, Lewis & Callaghan 2017
- 11. “The Blame Frame affixes responsibility on human agents and foregrounds the pursuit of punishment and justice. “The Explain Frame takes responsibility away from human agents and describes the tragedy in terms of natural or quasi-natural processes ... “Ultimately, both frames serve to reproduce social boundaries and reinforce the status quo.” Shahin 2015 ‘Accused’/‘blamed’
- 12. The “Law of narrative gravity” “The more widely accepted (or massive) a narrative, the more it attracts and shapes the perception of facts.” Grosser 2017
- 13. 1hr50m: “That’s the story” [Nightcrawler: Script, Analysis]
- 14. But data journalism is different, right?
- 15. Act II: (But we still need stories)
- 17. “Fight rumours and conspiracy theories with engaging and powerful narratives that leverage the same techniques as disinformation”
- 18. What do stories do? ‘Narrative news’ “elicited stronger affective and cognitive involvement” (but not recall); made “better informed” young readers (but lower satisfaction) ‘Melodrama’ “increases recall” (but “not comprehension”)
- 19. Not a great story.
- 20. “Data dumps were really popular, so you will have this huge dataset and you put it online … and everyone’s like ‘ah cool, that’s so much fun!’ and then we just see that readers just don’t use that. “So that’s the change that we’ve seen here. And we’re trying to encourage everybody to do, is focus on the story first.” Stuart Thompson, WSJ https://www.dropbox.com/s/umr3r11v8dc088x/nerdJournalismDISSERTATION.pdf?dl=0
- 21. Data’s challenge to journalism ● New genres: interactivity, personalisation, exploration vs explanation ● New cultures: transparency vs objectivity, hacker ethic (the digital commons) ● Data as ‘fact’ vs journalism as ‘story’
- 22. Deconstructing narrative Should contain an actor and a narrator*; 3 distinct levels: the text, the story, and the fabula; Contents should be “a series of connected events caused or experienced by actors.” - Mieke Bal *Actor and narrator can be same; narrator can be ‘effaced’
- 30. Journalism’s criteria ● Choosing fabula that are most important... ● ...and ordering them (in a story) to most accurately represent the facts ● ...and make those interesting and relevant ● ...to our audience ● ...through a particular medium (the text)
- 34. Showing uncertainty Gauge; box and whisker plots; ranges; visualising uncertainty;
- 38. The West Wing, Season 2 episode 16
- 39. “It is increasingly the case that it simply does not make sense to think about certain types of crime in terms of our conventional notions of space. Cybercrime, white-collar financial crime, transnational terrorism, fraud and identity theft all have very real local (and global) consequences, yet ‘take place’ within, through or across the ‘space of flows’ (Castells 1996). Such a-spatial or inter-spatial crime is invariably omitted from conventional crime maps.” Theo Kindynis (2014)
- 40. Act II: Scene 2 A new era
- 41. “[Manovich suggests] the database is to the digital era what narrative, in novels and cinema was to the modern era.” Lewis and Westlund (2014)
- 42. “Historically, the artist made a unique work within a particular medium. Therefore the interface and the work were the same; in other words, the level of an interface did not exist. With new media, the content of the work and the interface become separate. It is therefore possible to create different interfaces to the same material. ”
- 44. Jensen: 4 types of interactivity 1. Transmissional (extra info about elements, e.g. hover) 2. Consultational (multiple views, e.g. show same data in different ways) 3. Conversational (user can input, & is displayed, e.g. You Draw It) 4. Registrational (user input influences display, e.g. personalisation) Veglis & Bratsas 2017; Jensen 1998
- 45. NYTimes
- 47. 101 East investigates Malaysia's underground baby trade Chatbots as ergodic narrators?
- 48. Interactivity’s effects Transmissional & consultational “have been found to enhance user enjoyment and foster favourable attitudes [but] do not necessarily increase... knowledge acquisition … or recall “Conversational interactivity has also been found to increase loyalty” Veglis & Bratsas 2017;
- 49. “Not all new media objects are explicitly databases ... Computer games do not follow database logic, they appear to be ruled by another logic – that of an algorithm.”
- 50. Jesper Juul 1998
- 52. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinre view/deficits-graphic.html Games of emergence
- 53. “Games [need] how and why. 'How' lets you understand the system. 'Why' can be how the player understands the ways that the pieces in the system interact.” http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2011/04/designing-a-newsgame-is-an-act-of-journalism103.html
- 55. Empathy and “ludic suspense” Parallel empathy (feeling what the other person feels, e.g. tension, pressure, confusion) Reactive empathy (sympathy/pity because you have something in common with that character) Plewe & Fursich 2017
- 56. Act III: What we can do about stories
- 58. Providing a service to citizens by reporting truthfully and independently on information that is of public interest, holding power to account, providing a forum for criticism and compromise, and giving a voice to the voiceless in a way that makes significant information interesting and relevant. “Just the facts” Journalism’s story about itself
- 61. Journalism’s challenge to data ● Journalism’s verification vs data’s ‘truth’ ● Journalism holding power to account vs data as a form of power
- 62. “We are moving from the knowledge/power nexus portrayed by Foucault to a data/action nexus that does not need to move through theory: All it needs is data together with preferred outcomes” Geoffrey Bowker, 2014 https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/download/2190/1156
- 69. https://onlinejournalismblog.com/2017/08/07/10-principles-for-data-journalism-in-its-second-decade/
- 70. The resolution We are both products, and makers, of stories — the first step is to admit this Stories are just tools: whether used for good or ill depends on the storyteller Ethical storytelling means using stories transparently while striving for impact, fairness and accuracy