Data Visualization in the News Media: Trends and Challenges

Abstract

Data visualization is applied intensively in the digital news media where it serves as an effective tool for storytelling and for facilitating explanations of complex or data-intensive information. However, research and theoretical studies of this type of narrative lag badly behind in terms of both their volume and importance. It is in response to this failure to keep pace that this chapter seeks to review academic and scientific production dedicated to understanding the news media, data visualization and, more specifically, information visualization, infographics, visual narratives, and visual storytelling. In so doing, our aims are to, first, delimit the state of the art of this discipline; second, describe emerging trends and the challenges faced when seeking to deploy data visualization, at the same time as identifying the technologies and protocols being employed to this end; and, third, determine the possibilities and limitations of its use for communication and journalism. We find that recent studies have focused primarily on infographics, data journalism, structured journalism, media literacy and the reader’s interpretation of visual data, the exploitation of visualization in the digital media, and visual analytics. Studies of data visualization technologies and tools have shown an interest above all in the application of big data strategies within the news media, as well as in the development of software and tools of visual analysis. Finally, our scientific database revealed a number of studies dedicated to visual analytics, the specific challenges faced, and the decision-making processes involved.