Bringing Life to Numbers
As votes were tallied in the last US election, these numbers were transformed into colours on a map that would begin to uncover a narrative in the United States. A simple change in colour from blue to red in certain geographical areas on a map, provided an instantaneous visual framework communicating a widening chasm in American social strata. The numbers and colours when applied to map were telling a story.
Beyond simply election results, Data journalism is all around us. From a story indicating how an overseas war is affecting local gas prices to a narrative of how baseball statistics helped to win a championship. Perhaps one of the oldest examples of data journalism, and a precursor to what is now known as data visualization, is the mapping of cholera by a Physician John Snow in Soho London in 1854.
Mr. Snow had a hunch that cholera was connected to water and created a map linking deaths to location and changed how we viewed a disease originally considered an airborne threat. A great article about Snow’s map from top data journalist Simon Rogers can be found here.
Combining data and mapping to tell a story is as an example of what has become to be known as data journalism. The nature of data journalism is two-fold. In the case of Dr. Snow, a hunch is followed and data sets are scoured and combined to support or disprove this hunch. In other instances, data sets are analyzed and when an interesting pattern or concept emerges, a story is born.
From Snow’s cholera map, which serves as both a preliminary and timeless example of stalwart data journalism, we are witnessing a rise in computer assisted reporting. Many major news outlets have data journalism and interactive graphics sections. The Wall Street Journal published a visual piece illustrating their work on using an algorithm to analyze the complex rhyming structure and inspiration behind the Broadway hit, “Hamilton: The Musical.” (Sidenote: you can even make your own Hamiltonesque rhyme at the end of the article)
To understand what distinguishes data journalism from regular journalism lies in the data itself and using it to connect with readers. Data visualization and data journalism shows spatial relationships that are in some cases only able to be understood through visual representations.
The visual aspects of data journalism reveal subtle relationships as visual patterns and provides us a mechanism to help us understand these relationships that underpin complex social issues such as crime and violence. Seeing this data with context can help policymakers better understand which communities are doing well and which may need additional help or resources.
Data journalism provides a framework to understand how we can leverage our data to help us better understand our communities to work towards local issues and larger social complex problems. Here in New Brunswick, Canada — with open data portals in Fredericton and Saint John and provincial bodies such as the NB Health council releasing data though very understandable community profiles — how can we use these numbers to tell our Atlantic stories? OR how we can bring life to this data to help governments, communities, non-profits, and private companies to better understand the complex social and economic issues we not only have here in New Brunswick?
