Digital Tool analysis.
I have learned many things that are extremely relevant to journalism during the Journalism Technologies course this semester. What made the course so valuable is that it taught me how to expand my articles to become more eye-catching and informative through the implementation of multi-media technologies.
I was first exposed to media technologies through my first article in which we had to use data visualizations and images to help tell a story in City Journal.
After I used the Datawrapper to help tell my story, I was curious to reflect on how visualisation backed with data can improve or impede a story.
In short, I believe that it can be massively beneficial in terms of brevity and credibility. In today’s day and age of consuming content and education, most readers would prefer to have their information short and concise due to the nature of social media. Therefore, Datawrapper provides an extremely valuable resource by having the facts displayed immediately with links to where the information was sourced.
However, to go further into this topic, I will use my own story as an example.
The piece that I was covering was on Domestic Abuse. To fully set the tone, I thought it was essential to deliver an image to the audience that could truly capture the severity of an issue as serious as domestic violence.
This was the image that I decided to use:
To further my story, I used a bar chart to demonstrate the link between homelessness and domestic abuse. Through my research, I concluded that the chance of becoming homeless after experiencing domestic abuse is significantly increased. However, age and gender can affect figures. For example, women and children are more likely to face homelessness than men after facing domestic abuse.
The visualisation does an excellent job of instantly displaying the information in a simple format in which the reader can easily identify the staggering impact of domestic abuse on homelessness. With just a 10-second glance, the reader comes away knowing the essential information and is now informed of the topic.
However, the problem with this is that stories are much more than just statistics – personal anecdotes, quotes, and expert opinions can be just as important as a few numbers. If a person feels satisfied with just the statistics, they may feel that they are more informed on the topic than what they are.
All in all, data visualisations provide an alternative method of how to present journalism effectively.
