Data Visualization - Data Journalism

1. Statistics in Journalism. University of Sheffield 2014
Data Visualization in Journalism
New ways of explaining and storytelling
Elpidio del Campo - Miguel Hernández University, Spain

2. Zettabyte Era…
The results from International Data Corporation annual Digital
Universe study published their key findings on just how much
information we're all creating and using.
2011 we're forecasted to generate and consume 1.8 zettabytes of
information as a society.
with a forecasted 35 zettabytes by the end of this decade.
1 Zettabyte = 103 Exabyte
= 106 Petabytes
= 109 Terabytes
= 1012 Terabytes
= 1015 Mb
= 1018 kB
= 1021 Bytes
http://chucksblog.emc.com/chucks_blog/2011/06/2011-idc-digital-universe-study-big-data-is-here-now-what.html
To understand the Powers of Ten http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0

3. Zettabyte Era…
Cisco estimates that by 2015 global internet traffic will reach the zettabyte threshold annually.
http://www.neowin.net/news/internet-traffic-to-reach-zettabyte-by-2015
There is only one size larger than the zettabyte, and that is the, yottabyte (103 Zettabyte) but the figure is
so astronomically high it would be impossible to even attempt to convey it in human terms. Assuming you
saved a yottabyte's worth of information to 64GB microSD cards, the stack of microSDs would weigh just
under 4,000,000 tons; roughly two thirds of the Great Pyramid of Giza's weight.
Micro SD 64 Gb
Use in mobile phones
Make Great Pyramid of Giza out of 64GB microSD cards
and you're close.

4. Data Visualization…
Understand and convey this information (which grows
exponentially) through the use of new sensors, devices and
networks is one of the reasons for Data Visualization.
Data Visualization is a discipline that uses the
communicative power of images to convey meaning
extracted from large masses of data generated by social
processes.

5. http://www.good.is/posts/the-world-of-data-we-re-creating-on-the-internet

6. Data Visualization… It isn´t something new
London Underground Map 1908.
Underground Map, Henry Charles Beck 1933.
Subway lines overlap and correspond to a geographical scale map.
TUFTE, Edward R. (2001). The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Graphics Press. USA.

7. Data Visualization… Interdisciplinary and collaborative work
• It is appropriate to highlight the fundamental qualities on which pivots the discipline of
data visualization: interdisciplinary and collaborative work. Being undoubtedly the science,
art and design the three basic pillars that data visualization is built. So, its essence is
opposed to the establishment of borders or boundaries.
• Data Visualization particular focus on the social and human events, is a contemporary
paradigm of interconnections between different areas of knowledge.
Science
Design
Art

8. Data Visualization… Why I like it
Jonathan Harris
He studied computer science at Princeton University. Combining elements of
computer science, anthropology, visual art and storytelling, Jonathan Harris
designs systems to explore and explain the human world.
Art We Feel Fine
Visual Storytelling We Feel Fine is an exploration of human emotion on a global scale.
Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large
number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted
blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such
a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling"
expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.)
http://www.wefeelfine.org/

9. Data Visualization… in Professional Journalism
• Data Visualization has become an important part of the actual Data Journalism.
Because of the use of image is necessary to communicate meaning in big data.
• Professional Journalism, the most advanced media have developed specialized departments in Data
Journalism, Multimedia and Interactive Graphics.
The Guardian
How riot rumours spread on Twitter
The Seattle Times
Journalism Methadona and the Politics of Pain.
Professional Media
The New York Times
How Many Households Are Like Yours?
Reuters
Connected China

10. Data Visualization… in Professional Journalism
• Data Journalism, being focus on the social and human events, is a contemporary
paradigm of interconnections between different areas of knowledge.
The Guardian
How riot rumours spread on Twitter (2011)
Guardian Interactive team, Rob Procter, Farida Vis and Alex Voss
Visual Journalism
Working together:
Data Visualization and Storytelling (Award 2012)
Informatics-Social Science http://www.theguardian.com/uk/interactive/2011/dec/07/london-riotstwitter
- With help from an interdisciplinary team of researchers at the Universities of Manchester, St Andrews and Leicester,
we distilled the overall corpus down to a series of subsets related to each rumour.
- With this work underway, developers Martin Shuttleworth and Robin Beitra built an interactive timeline that would
allow each rumour to be replayed like a video
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/dec/08/twitter-riots-interactive

11. Data Visualization… in Professional Journalism
• Data Journalism has been always a base of the classic Investigate Journalism. Asking to
the numbers is one the best ways to find the key of the story.
• Now the tools for working with numbers and statistics are more powerful and easy to
use.
The Seattle Times
Methadona and the Politics of Pain. (2012)
Investigative Journalism
Data Journalism Data driven Investigation (Award 2012)
http://seattletimes.com/flatpages/specialreports/methadone/methadonea
ndthepoliticsofpain.html
Source Documents
Graphics
Text Reportage
Video

12. Data Visualization… in Professional Journalism
• Statistics is the base on which a great story unfolds in different formats.
• Numbers needs the Letters to been explained, even when graphics communicate
meaning easily.
The New York Times
Interactive
How Many Households Are Like Yours?
“Total” Journalism Graphic and Multimedia: The Traditional Family Gives Way to an Array of
All media used in their best Configurations
way to build the story http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/06/17/nyregion/maps-of-familytypes.html?ref=nyregion
Articles/Report
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/nyregion/an-american-family-momsperm-donor-lover-child.html
In the Family. Series on Individual New York Families
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/nyregion/in-the-family.html

13. Data Visualization… in Professional Journalism
• New digital devices require new ways of storytelling to take advantage of all their
capacities.
Reuters
Future Journalism
Looking to the Tablet
Connected China
Data driven Investigation (Award 2012)
http://connectedchina.reuters.com/
An introductory video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-Eaz6F6M0o

14. Data Visualization… From the side of the citizen/user
• Political Activism, associated to Citizen Journalism, is looking for Data that usually governments
don´t leave open. The movement of Open Data is connected directly with the Independent
Journalism.
Demonocracy.info
Let's skip the political bickering farce and just look at the numbers
Citizen or
Independent
Journalism
Political/Social
Activism
National Debt of the United States
On December 12, 2013, debt held by the public was approximately $12.312 trillion
http://demonocracy.info/infographics/usa/us_debt/us_debt.html
US Presidential Elections - For sale to highest bidder
http://demonocracy.info/infographics/usa/political_spending/2012_elections.html
Source: http://www.opensecrets.org/about/

15. Data Visualization… From the side of the citizen/user
Citizen Journalism – Open Data, The idea behind citizen journalism is that people without
professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of
the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others.
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/09/your-guide-to-citizen-journalism270/
ProPublica
Citizen or
Independent
Journalism
Political/Social
Activism
ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative
journalism in the public interest.
Al Shaw, Kim Barker and Justin Elliott,
Who’sMaking Money From All This Campaign Spending?
Article
Campaign Spending Shows Political Ties, Self-Dealing
http://www.propublica.org/article/campaign-spending-shows-political-ties-selfdealing
The Source
http://developer.nytimes.com/docs/read/campaign_finance_api

16. Data Visualization… Challenges
The Challenge of Data
•
•
•
How is the data collected?
Statistical significance
Causality
•
•
•
Number are not the truth
Raw data is an oxymoron
Data has politics
Scientific Aspects
True / False
Essence of the numbers
The Challenge of Data Journalism
From the point of view of the readers
•
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/311122013-AP/EN/3-11122013-AP-EN.PDF
Data Journalism
http://www.elperiodico.com/es/noticias/educacion/hijospadres-baja-educacion-2923291
Make graphics that people
(readers) can understand.

17. Data Visualization… New ways of explaining and storytelling
In summary
Data Journalism – Data Visualization
• Data Visualization is the best way to work with large amounts of data (Big Data)
and display it in a meaningful way to the reader.
• Despite its many forms and techniques that Data Visualization has, it is
appropriate to consider exploiting its potential in the network or over the new
digital devices as it is distributed massively and allows interactivity with the data
and graphics.
• Nowadays the movement of Open Data is an essential because is demanding to
the governments the public access to the data bases. This is the source which
usually works the Data Journalism.
• It´s important remember that numbers are just a tool to investigate and it´s
necessary that journalist use them with ethics and don´t put on them the “truth”.

18. Thanks for your attention
edelcampo@umh.es