Digital media refers to any form of communication media which operates with coded data systems, or more commonly known as digital media platforms. It can be created, viewed, distributed and listened to.
As society has switched over to technology and the digital world, digital media has risen as the preferred form of news consumption as individuals choose to reach for online newspapers and select what they want to see, rather than paying for a physical copy.
Digital media platforms such as Flourish have helped journalists to be able to display their content in a more interesting and interactive way.
Flourish is a platform whereby creators can upload their data to create a range of different data visualisations in order to support and showcase data which is being told in their stories.
The platform allows users to “enhance their journalism with rich interactive output created with Flourish, the powerful platform for data visualisation and storytelling.” (Flourish, 2022).
Flourish has been one of the most useful platforms I’ve learnt about in the journalism technologies course and I have used it throughout all of my assignments.
It is a clear and easy way to convey information, whilst also being a good interactive component for readers and can really just brighten up your story to make it look more interesting.
In assignment one, we used Flourish to create data visualisations to pair with our story, with mine being on female economic empowerment.
This bar chart comparison I designed on Flourish was extremely useful in clearly demonstrating the differences between male and female unemployment rates across different countries.
Another digital media platform which has helped data journalists is Shorthand, “a digital storytelling platform with collaboration tools specifically designed to help teams build engaging and interactive content.” (Shorthand, 2022).
Whilst it is a paid platform, it is certainly worth the value as “its customers- which include the BBC, Honda, NBC News, the University of Cambridge and Manchester City- routinely boast radical improvements in their engagement metrics,” (Shorthand, 2022).
When using Shorthand for assignment two, I found it was really easy to navigate and use as well as display my ideas in an aesthetic, easy to read way.
Overall, these two digital media platforms have been extremely useful in aiding journalists to make their stories more intriguing, accessible and interactive for society.
