Data news in the Big Data age: from data but above data

Data news report is a new kind of report which is born under the background of Internet development, and visual expression is an important way of data news. The data news not only refers to the direct introduction of the data analysis technology and the visual design in the news practice, its core content is the news narration behind the data.

In order to display the abstract data concretely and intuitively, the concept and connotation are expressed by data, and visualization is a main expression means of data news narration.

Type

Blending of 7 kinds of visual narrative classifications

American scholars, Edward Sig and Jeffrey Hill, have classified the visual narrative types of data news into the following categories: Magazine, chart, column schemata, flowchart, comic, slide, and video. These 7 classifications are not mutually exclusive, and each type often has other types of elements.

(i) magazine-style

The magazine type refers to the most traditional and illustrated report, which is mainly written in the text, and is used as reference, assistant and corroboration in the data graph. In the magazine-type Data news report, the characteristic and intrinsic relation of the data are mainly expressed by words, the task of narration is mainly done by writing, the meaning of illustration is limited to increase the richness, interest and credibility of the report.

(ii) Chart type

Since the concept of data visualization has emerged, there have been many ways to represent data and its inherent laws, such as columnar, pie, line, scatter, histogram, polar coordinates, time series, thematic maps and Atlas. Compared with the magazine style, the chart visual narration has played the visual ideographic function to a great extent, by establishing the connection between the visual elements of color, line, shape and the thinking elements, such as text, data, concept and so on, mainly relies on the image to complete the narration, the text as the auxiliary.

For example, the British "Guardian" January 26, 2010 released the data News feature "9374.html" > World Economic Pull through (Figure 1) is a graphical visual narrative type: The whole news to the image, on the world map with red, yellow, green, blue on behalf of the recession, out of recession, Avoid recessions and rapidly developing countries and regions.

(iii) Column schemata

The column schema that 2 or more charts appear in the form of columns in the picture, comprehensive account information. The column schema is the expansion of the graphical visual narration, which can explain the information in more angles and more aspects.

(iv) Flow-chart

That is to use the form of flow chart to analyze the event development process, explain the impact of different factors and the consequences of different choices of visual narrative.

For example, the Financial management application mint and the data news website Wallstats cooperate to report the credit crisis picture guide of credit crisis. (Figure 2)

(v) Comic-strip

Comic-strip visual narration is a kind of simple and understandable narrative type, which is similar to that in ancient Chinese painting, and shows the flow of time or the transformation of space in the same plane according to the order of the readers ' eye observation.

Last year, for example, during the national two sessions of the environmental report "two sessions of the Beijing Sky" will be daily in the same scene photos edited together, reflecting the two sessions of Beijing's air quality situation.

(vi) Slide type

Slide is the way to explain the information through the slide, the content is divided into multiple pages step-by-step narrative. Reuters 2013 Data News Award nomination work "Contact China" on the slide form, the new generation of China's leadership and political structure introduced.

(vii) Video-type

Video-type that is, through short films, animation and other forms of data news narrative. For example, the Multimedia magazine "first reading" produced the "Civil Service promotion timetable."

Characteristics

Let the reader find a story in the information map

Because the magazine-style and the video-style narrative method mainly obeys the law of narrative and short film narration, the data only serves as a minor element to assist the narration, in this paper, we only discuss 5 kinds of narrative methods in the visualization of data news, such as chart, column, flowchart, comic, slide.

From the point of view of the audience, the data news information has the meaning in the audience's mind as follows: From the information map that the reporter provides, the reader discovers the law and the relation, summarizes the phenomenon from the event, finds the story. In this process, we can see the narrative characteristics of the data news.

Narrative Material: Information highly compressed. A news story chooses the way data news is presented, usually because it contains a lot of information material. The advantage of data news is that it can compress extremely long time, great scope, complicated logic and many factors, and realize multi-angle, multi-level and comprehensive narration. The BBC website's theme, "Every death on every highway in Britain 1999-2000" covers all the deaths caused by car crashes across the UK for more than 10 years, providing the date, place and number of deaths for readers to see.

However, the ultimate aim of information compression is not to render data information, but to produce meaning and complete narration based on data information. Therefore, the visual narration of the data news is how to compress the data, from which angle, from which factors to generalize the information and in what order to give the reader.

Narrative Subject: The initiative is forwarded by the journalist to the reader. Interactivity is one of the most typical characteristics of data news, which is embodied in two aspects: on the one hand, the user has a certain right of participation in the process of collecting information. For example, in the March 2014 report of the two sessions, Tencent Network United National 34 media for 15 days of online voting, 25 people in the field of reform initiatives to the user satisfaction rating, on the basis of information integration, production of "China Point praise Map"; On the other hand, in the process of data rendering, Many reports also show different content and form depending on the user's specific circumstances and individual choices. For example, in the Guardian's "World economic pull through", users can choose to view the economic growth rate of a certain region, independently compare the economic situation in different regions, and produce their own conclusions. Therefore, from the acquisition of information to the meaning of information, network news than other types of media to give users a stronger initiative.

Narrative perspective: Good at macro-narrative and micro-narrative. The visual narration of the data news is good at focusing on different aspects of the daily life, and the user can not experience and perceive the law and connection of the users due to the limitation of time span, space span, the abstraction degree of the event and the geographical factors. To cause a sense of shock or curiosity. From the traditional narratology point of view, the data news visual narration constructs the story to start, the inheritance, the turn, the combination, to the audience carries on the subtle emotion influence the ability to be inferior to the text, the video and so on narrative method. Therefore, the macro-narration and micro-narration which are not close to daily life in news stories often use the means of data visualization.

For example, in the New York Times theme, the face of the dead, in the middle of the chart, dark squares represent dead soldiers in Afghanistan, light squares represent the dead soldiers in Iraq, the right column for each soldier's photo, name, date of death, the age of death, the troops, home, the country of death and other information. If this news in the traditional print media by the text narration to complete, or in the television media with the picture clip with the commentary form to complete, on the one hand the audience cognition time will be longer, on the other hand produces the visual impact will also be weaker.

In the large data age, data news has a broad development prospects, as the main presentation of data news, visual expression has broadened the perspective of news reporting and space, so that many of the past can not be reported content to be presented to the audience. Mastering the characteristics of the data news in the visual narration, and playing its advantages in the field of narrative meaning, is one of the necessary qualities of today's journalists.