In 2010, David McCandless gave a TED-Talk that remains as relevant as ever in 2021. “Everyday, all of us are being blasted by information design; it’s being poured into our eyes through the web, and we’re all visualizers now…”, he states with reference to the digital age (8:40-8:50). McCandless, author and founder of Information is Beautiful, began his career as a programmer. He then became a journalist. Eventually, he found himself immersed in the field of data visualization. Yet he repeatedly tells his followers that he never took a graphic design course in his life. He never considered himself to be an artist. Rather, he simply took the elements of visual design that had been drilled into his brain over the years and applied them to graphic design–and eventually to data visualization. “It’s almost like being exposed to all this media over the years had instilled a kind of dormant design literacy in me”, he states during the talk (8:30-8:40).
McCandless’ story, in many ways, is a microcosm of journalism today. At the heart of all journalists is a drive to tell stories– to find patterns in daily occurrences and transcribe the meaning of these patterns to the reader. Yet with this drive to tell stories comes the necessity to both understand and transcribe the data that have become so widely available in the age of computers. The more accessible the data becomes, the more it is expected of writers to incorporate it into their works. This is especially true for journalists. There is no question that having data skills as a journalist is crucial to effective storytelling. In the case of McCandless, these data skills came as second-nature (just look at his self-made website, which offers online courses in data visualization). Using his previous experience with computers, as well as a “dormant design literacy” that he argues is within all of us, McCandless permanently enhanced his journalism skills in an instant. He capitalized on a brilliant way to incorporate data into his stories. In short, he learned to visualize data.
Data visualization can take on many forms– the “Nutrition Facts” table on the back of a food label, the speedometer in your car, the virtual map of election results presented on the news– these are all visual representations of data. McCandless’ Ted-talk outlines just how important visualization can be in developing a true understanding of data. “If you combine the language of the eye with the language of the mind, you start speaking two languages simultaneously, each enhancing the other”, he argues. Yet McCandless also recognizes that data visualization is often not enough to fully convey the meaning of the data to an audience. It would be puzzling to read an article where the author simply copied and pasted a bunch of graphs onto the page. Clearly, there is more to data visualization than this. Journalists must be able present the data in a visually understandable way while also supplying the right context to their reader; they must go through a series of steps in which the data is presented and the story is told. But above all else, journalists must be able to form a lasting connection between the reader and the data. Without this connection, what good is the article in the first place?
The means by which successful data journalists, like McCandless, go about forming this connection with the reader is what I plan to focus on in this e-text. First, I will consider the methods by which journalists use data visualization to enhance their stories. Next, I will explore the concept of data storytelling, and how data journalists can make data into a memorable experience for the reader. Then, I will present recent examples of ineffective data representations related to the COVID-19 outbreak. Finally, I will consider how anyone with an interest in journalism can begin their journey toward data literacy, and the tools that can aid in this journey.