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Tag: data visualization

How Lazaro Gamio of the New York Times visualized the COVID-19 death toll

As the number of Americans who have died of COVID-19 has climbed beyond 500,000, it’s become increasingly difficult to conceptualize this number. The New York Times has been tracking COVID […]

March 4, 2021March 4, 2021 Raina Levin Behind the scenes, Insights, Interviews

How Reuters visualized the influence of K-pop on social justice issues

For the past several years, racial injustice in the United States has been trending on social media and in the news. Movements such as Black Lives Matter have increased awareness of racial injustice across the […]

January 26, 2021February 4, 2021 Samuel Chuan Behind the scenes, Insights, Interviews

How the Wall Street Journal visualized the 2020 election results

Each time an election year dawns, it brings changes – the candidates campaigning, how the battleground states are polling, and, of course, changes in our national obsession: election maps. But […]

November 30, 2020November 30, 2020 Sharmila Kuthunur Behind the scenes

Four tips from the Wall Street Journal’s Yan Wu on visualizing police data

News organizations interested in exploring different ways to cover policing can draw inspiration from a piece by Yan Wu, a graphics reporter at the Wall Street Journal and alumna of […]

November 10, 2020November 10, 2020 Samuel Chuan Behind the scenes

How interactive, visual storytelling helps readers better retain information

Earlier this year, you may have seen the Washington Post’s wildly popular coronavirus simulator explaining how pandemics spread exponentially. But have you played the Financial Times’ Uber Game? What about […]

November 6, 2020November 6, 2020 Maaisha Osman Behind the scenes, Interviews

How Stuff.co.nz told the story of New Zealand’s coronavirus lockdown

Felippe Rodrigues creates data visualizations for stuff.co.nz, New Zealand’s largest online news publisher. One of his recent pieces, “The story of New Zealand’s COVID lockdown, in graphs,” uses smoothly animated […]

October 30, 2020October 30, 2020 Taylor Blackley Behind the scenes, Interviews

Analyzing the top links, domains, and keywords from 29 million tweets about Covid-19

Today, in collaboration with Lazer Lab at Northeastern University’s Network Science Institute, I published an interactive dashboard exploring the prevalence of Covid-19 news and misinformation on Twitter. The analysis is […]

October 21, 2020October 21, 2020 Aleszu Bajak Research

How the Allen Coral Atlas is mapping and monitoring coral reefs worldwide

Although coral reefs occupy less than one percent of the ocean floor, their importance extends well beyond their size. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that 500 million people […]

October 20, 2020October 20, 2020 Sharmila Kuthunur Behind the scenes, Climate Journalism Lab, Interviews

How The New York Times is tracking Covid-19 cases in the U.S.

Published June 30, 2020. The New York Times’ map of U.S. cases of Covid-19 is a living webpage that changes with the numbers and relies on a team of over […]

September 1, 2020September 15, 2020 Julia Hong Behind the scenes, Interviews

How FlowingData’s Nathan Yau thinks about data stories

Nathan Yau, the founder of the website FlowingData, has been creating and discussing data visualization projects since 2007. Browsing through the site reveals no single theme; instead, there is a […]

August 17, 2020August 17, 2020 Sharmila Kuthunur Behind the scenes, Interviews

How The New York Times visualized trends in white extremist attacks

In April 2019, The New York Times published an interactive article on white extremist killings from New Zealand to Norway to the United States. Using maps and a timeline to plot […]

June 15, 2020June 15, 2020 Mihir Patil Behind the scenes, Interviews

How Núcleo Jornalismo is tracking Brazilian politicians on Twitter

Late last month, Brazil’s justice minister Sergio Moro resigned in protest after President Jair Bolsonaro fired his police chief. According to Moro, a prominent politician who may be seeking a […]

May 6, 2020May 20, 2020 Aleszu Bajak Behind the scenes, Interviews

A roundup of coronavirus dashboards, datasets and resources

Access and availability of data on the novel coronavirus and the disease it causes, Covid-19, are essential for understanding how the virus spreads, who is most likely to get it, […]

April 17, 2020April 17, 2020 Martin Frigaard Roundups

How the Pudding analyzed YouTube “vlogpologies”

What does a YouTuber do if they’re caught in a scandal? Usually, they’ll film themselves explaining that they’re sorry and how they intend to change, and then upload the apology […]

April 14, 2020April 14, 2020 Siti Aisyah Behind the scenes, Interviews

How the Wall Street Journal made the College Board’s adversity scores interactive

The world of higher education reporting got more than its share of news coverage in 2019. Actress Felicity Huffman was sentenced to two weeks in jail for paying Rick Singer, […]

April 12, 2020April 14, 2020 Rose McDermott Behind the scenes, Interviews

How to shift Alaska and Hawaii below the lower 48 for your interactive choropleth map

Last month, the Harvard Global Health Institute collaborated with The New York Times and ProPublica to publish a model estimating the capacity of hospitals across the United States to cope […]

April 2, 2020April 2, 2020 Aleszu Bajak How to

How the Washington Post logs fatal police shootings in the U.S.

The Washington Post first began examining fatal police shootings in the United States in 2015. The newspaper’s investigation that uncovered that the FBI was undercounting half the number of fatal […]

March 13, 2020March 25, 2020 Juliana Malzoni Behind the scenes, Interviews

Introducing the Experimental Storytellers

Hello again from Northeastern University’s Reinventing Local TV News Project. It’s been a busy year since we released our research report, which identified new ways television newsrooms can work to grow their audience […]

February 27, 2020February 27, 2020 Mike Beaudet and John Wihbey Interviews, Reinventing Local TV News

How Northeastern’s Samuel Scarpino built a live map tracking the coronavirus outbreak

Samuel Scarpino, an assistant professor in Northeastern’s Network Science Institute, built a map that monitors the outbreak of the coronavirus. He has collaborated with many other scientists to track the […]

February 10, 2020April 14, 2020 Anna Kracklauer Behind the scenes, Interviews

Five ways organizations are visualizing carbon emissions

Climate change is a global issue and scientists and journalists alike are increasingly making climate-related data more visible and accessible. Understanding the major causes and contributors to emissions of CO2, […]

January 15, 2020January 24, 2020 Julia Hong Climate Journalism Lab, Roundups

How The New York Times broke down the history of the NYC subway map

For the 40th anniversary of the New York City subway map, The New York Times created an interactive story that all but places you directly inside the map. Using a […]

December 23, 2019December 23, 2019 Alexander Lim Behind the scenes, Interviews

How I visualized hundreds of ballot proposition outcomes with R Shiny

Most years, San Franciscans vote on ballot measures determining whether or not police should carry tasers, to allocate $50 million a year for homeless services, or to impose a fee […]

December 19, 2019December 19, 2019 Nick Jones Behind the scenes

How Vox visualized segregation in the United States

Vox data journalist Alvin Chang, an alum of the Boston Globe and ESPN, has been writing stories about segregation for most of his career. Earlier this year, Chang looked at […]

November 5, 2019November 5, 2019 Audrey Cahyadi Behind the scenes, Interviews

How designer Nadieh Bremer teaches herself new skills to continue visualizing data in new ways

If you are passionate about telling data-driven stories more engagingly, you should not miss out on Nadieh Bremer, a freelance data visualization designer and artist with a background in astronomy […]

October 31, 2019October 30, 2019 Szu Yu Chen Behind the scenes, Interviews

Six ways you might consider visualizing political issues and ideologies this election

With the 2020 election around the corner, we’re on the look out for new ways news outlets, advocacy groups and other organizations are visualizing political stances and voter opinions. Below […]

October 8, 2019October 8, 2019 Ian Toman Roundups

How Colombia’s Datasketch wants to make data visualization easier for Latin American newsrooms

“We live in a world that is drowning in data and getting the stories may actually be harder than ever because the stories are hidden in plain sight in millions […]

August 27, 2019August 28, 2019 Aleszu Bajak Behind the scenes

How to build a GIF of satellite imagery in R

“The timelapse imagery of Chennai’s disappearing reservoirs is mind boggling,” Earther senior reporter Brian Kahn wrote on Twitter recently. Kahn had just published the piece “Why Chennai, India’s Sixth Biggest […]

July 2, 2019July 3, 2019 Aleszu Bajak Data Journalism in R, How to

Facebook political ads reveal an early but limited look at the Democratic playbook

In the first three days since launching his 2020 run for president last week, Joe Biden spent more than $400,000 on Facebook ads. His fellow candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie […]

May 2, 2019July 11, 2019 Aleszu Bajak Election Tracker

How to build a bubble chart of individuals mentioned in the Mueller report

When the redacted Mueller report was released last week, journalists across the country scrambled to read through and analyze the document. Data scientists and information designers were hard at work, […]

April 25, 2019April 25, 2019 Aleszu Bajak Data Journalism in R, How to

Exploring bike rental behavior using R

Bikes have become one of the fastest growing modes of city travel which is why it’s no surprise that Lyft and Uber are getting into the two-wheeler game. Lyft’s recent […]

April 2, 2019April 10, 2019 Peter Spangler Data Journalism in R, How to

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What is Storybench?
Storybench takes an “under the hood” look at the latest in digital storytelling, from data visualization and investigative journalism to virtual reality and the digital humanities. In addition to in-depth features and interviews with industry practitioners, we offer hands-on tutorials that can be “downloaded” right into the newsroom or classroom.

We also publish research we're running at Northeastern's School of Journalism along with collaborators in data science, communication studies, computational social sciences and information design. These projects include the Co-Laboratory for Data Impact, the Climate Journalism Lab, the 2020 Storybench Election Coverage Tracker and the Reinventing Local TV News project.

Want to contribute to Storybench? Pitch us or join us for a graduate degree in the Media Innovation program at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism.
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Storybench 2020 Election Coverage Tracker

The Storybench 2020 Election Coverage Tracker intends to keep tabs on the political coverage of the 2020 presidential election by covering media trends and using various data sources to explore media narratives.

Instead of keeping track of who’s ahead in the horse race, we’ll be turning our focus to those covering the horse race – the media outlets themselves and various proxies for public attention. Follow along here.

Best of Storybench

How the Wall Street Journal visualized 500+ conflicts of interest of the Trumps

Women on the 2020 campaign trail are being treated more negatively by the media

Getting started with data visualization in R using ggplot2

Understanding what makes a visualization memorable

Using French wine reviews to understand TF-IDF, a measure of how unique a word is to a document

 

Projects

Over the next two years we’ll be surveying the media’s coverage of the candidates and the issues. Follow along here.

 


The Reinventing Local TV News Project, from Northeastern’s School of Journalism, is analyzing the formats and practices of local news stations, and suggesting new ways of telling stories that can better engage diverse audiences. Read our inaugural post here.

 

The Climate Journalism Lab

The Climate Journalism Lab aims to examine and unpack the trends, tools and techniques employed by reporters and organizations covering climate change.

 

Join us at Northeastern!

Want to write for Storybench and probe the frontiers of media innovation? Apply for one of our graduate programs at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism.

Rolling admissions, no GREs required and financial aid available. Email here.

Interviews

Pizza, Press & Politics is our weekly speaker series at Northeastern’s School of Journalism. Watch interviews with David Filipov, Mike Workman, Jenn Smith, Martha Durkee-Neuman, Susan Labandibar, John Ward, Marc Fortier, Carol Gregory, Ling-Mei Wong and Elana Gordon.

Collaborative, Open, Mobile

Over the last three years, Storybench has interviewed 72 data journalists, web developers, interactive graphics editors, and project managers from around the world to provide an “under the hood” look at the ingredients and best practices that go into today’s most compelling digital storytelling projects.

They boil down to three key areas of emphasis: 1) highly networked, team-based collaboration; 2) an ethos of open-source sharing, both within and between newsrooms; 3) and mobile-driven story presentation. Read our paper here.

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What is Storybench?
Storybench takes an “under the hood” look at the latest in digital storytelling, from data visualization and investigative journalism to virtual reality and the digital humanities. In addition to in-depth features and interviews with industry practitioners, we offer hands-on tutorials that can be “downloaded” right into the newsroom or classroom.

We also publish research we're running at Northeastern's School of Journalism along with collaborators in data science, communication studies, computational social sciences and information design. These projects include the Co-Laboratory for Data Impact, the Climate Journalism Lab, the 2020 Storybench Election Coverage Tracker and the Reinventing Local TV News project.

Want to contribute to Storybench? Pitch us or join us for a graduate degree in the Media Innovation program at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism.

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