A data story combines text, data, and visual elements. During this session, we will consider the ethics of design choices, the responsibilities of communicating data in equitable ways, and how we can use basic statistics to know when we have a story.
This session is a "Cliff's Notes" version of a larger workshop on storytelling with data. To view the larger universe of resources and materials for this topic, please visit Data Conversations.
Statistics can be a useful tool for evaluating both data and the stories they tell.
- An article over at The Conversation summarizes The Seven Deadly Sins of Statistics...and How to Avoid Them.
- Visit my statistics bookmarks on Pinboard for everything from basic explanations to tools and visuals to support your understanding.
Boy, J., Detienne, F., & Fekete, J. D. (2015, April). Storytelling in information visualizations: Does it engage users to explore data?. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1449-1458). ACM.
Brehmer, M., & Munzner, T. (2013). A multi-level typology of abstract visualization tasks. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 19(12), 2376-2385.
D’Ignazio, C., & Klein, L. F. (2016). Feminist data visualization. In Workshop on Visualization for the Digital Humanities (VIS4DH), Baltimore. IEEE.
Drucker, J. (2011). Humanities approaches to graphical display. Digital Humanities Quarterly, 5(1), 1-21.
Hullman, J., & Diakopoulos, N. (2011). Visualization rhetoric: Framing effects in narrative visualization. IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics, 17(12), 2231-2240.
Hullman, J., Kosara, R., & Lam, H. (2017, June). Finding a Clear Path: Structuring Strategies for Visualization Sequences. In Computer Graphics Forum (Vol. 36, No. 3, pp. 365-375).
Kim, Y. S., Reinecke, K., & Hullman, J. (2017). Data Through Others' Eyes: The Impact of Visualizing Others' Expectations on Visualization Interpretation. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.
Kozlíková, B., Schreck, T., & Wischgoll, T. An Argument Structure for Data Stories.
Lee, B., Riche, N. H., Isenberg, P., & Carpendale, S. (2015). More than telling a story: Transforming data into visually shared stories. IEEE computer graphics and applications, 35(5), 84-90.
Segel, E., & Heer, J. (2010). Narrative visualization: Telling stories with data. IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics, 16(6), 1139-1148.
Stolper, C. D., Lee, B., Riche, N. H., & Stasko, J. (2017). Emerging and recurring data-driven storytelling techniques: Analysis of a curated collection of recent stories. Retrieved in January.
Turkle, S., & Papert, S. (1992). Epistemological pluralism and the revaluation of the concrete. Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 11(1), 3-33.
We are rarely good storytellers...but why? An article from PsychCentral explores why most people are awful storytellers and The Book of Life provides some tips on how to narrate your dreams. Even better, check out The Art of Storytelling, a free course from Pixar. It is part of their Pixar in a Box program that helps you learn how their artists do their jobs.
Browse the projects from the Tactical Technology Collective. These focus on three themes: politics of data, digital security and privacy, and exposing and shaping issues. The White Room is highly recommended. You can also watch Marek Tuszynski speak about the project in this Eyeo 2016 presentation.
All work with data---from the labels we choose to the charts we design---has potential inequitable impacts. Lena Groeger writes about some of these in Forms Matter: how the design of forms can decide an election, affect racial profiling & shape identity
Read Miriam Posner's summary of her keynote on The radical potential of the Digital Humanities: The most challenging computing problem is the interrogation of power to think more about structures of power, like race and gender, as they relate to how we use data.
Lauren Klein has written about visualization as argument. You may also be interested in her presentation on feminist data visualization or view all of her projects.
A pop-up shop in London will trade you your data for something you want to buy. Take a look inside the store that only accepts personal data as currency.