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Tag: data visualization

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

Six tools showcased at NICAR 2019 that you should probably learn

When it comes to a major data journalism conference like NICAR, you can probably predict that a few popular data visualization and analysis tools are going to receive a lot […]

March 26, 2019March 26, 2019 Gibby Free Roundups

How The Pudding visualized the structure of Ali Wong’s stand-up comedy

Stand-up comedy is evolving. The top specials of recent years — Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette, Hasan Minhaj’s Homecoming King, James Acaster’s Repertoire, to name a few — are distinct from traditional […]

February 7, 2019February 7, 2019 Meredith Dietz Behind the scenes, Interviews

How we plotted 17,000 data points in 3D to explore police use of force in New Jersey

Last November, I pushed my first commit to Github having no idea what I was in for: creating visualizations with more than 17,000 data points representing police officers who had […]

January 3, 2019April 10, 2019 Yan Wu Behind the scenes

How to map point data and polygon shapefiles in R

I recently published a series of interactive maps for Beeradvocate magazine that explored storm surge scenarios and low-lying breweries in Boston, New York City, Charleston and Miami. Here’s Boston: This […]

December 20, 2018December 20, 2018 Aleszu Bajak Data Journalism in R, How to

Takeaways on data storytelling from the 2018 Tapestry Conference

The Tapestry Conference, an interactive online data storytelling event, was held last week for the 6th time at the University of Miami in Florida. Sponsored by Miami’s School of Communication […]

December 7, 2018December 13, 2018 Steven Braun Insights

How PolicyMap is setting the standard for mapping data

Trying to create data maps can be frustrating and expensive, especially when you’re managing overwhelming amounts of data in a simple visual way. Maggie McCullough felt that there should be […]

November 19, 2018November 17, 2018 David Harbeck Behind the scenes, Interviews

“The Immigration Experience” humanizes the history of immigration law. Here’s how.

After the Great Famine, you leave Ireland for America. When anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant sentiment peaks in Boston, do you stay or move to Lowell? Or maybe your parents bring you from […]

November 9, 2018November 9, 2018 Meredith Dietz Behind the scenes, Interviews, Research

Some not-so-obvious ways to represent voter turnout data

With voter registration deadlines fast approaching – and some already past – social media has been filled with reminders urging those who are eligible to register and to make sure […]

October 19, 2018November 8, 2018 Angela Gomba Insights, Roundups

How data helped visualize the family separation crisis

Early this summer, at the height of the family separation crisis – where children were being forcibly separated from their parents at our nation’s border – a team of scholars […]

October 12, 2018October 11, 2018 Chava Gourarie Behind the scenes, Interviews

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

“The heady scent of grapefruit and tangelo peel immediately add savoriness to the crisp green-apple fruit that is evident on the nose. But there are also richer hints of honey […]

June 28, 2018June 28, 2018 Aleszu Bajak Data Journalism in R, How to

How to build an animated map of tweets about the NBA finals in R

After beating the Cleveland Cavaliers in four games, the Golden State Warriors have won the 2018 NBA finals. We decided to build an animated map of Twitter mentions of #DubNation […]

June 13, 2018June 13, 2018 Martin Frigaard Data Journalism in R, How to

How I created Accio Data, a data-driven visual guide to all things Harry Potter

The wizarding world created by J.K. Rowling is full of complex characters, magic, creatures, adventures and more. I grew up having the stories read to me, reading them myself countless […]

June 11, 2018June 11, 2018 Olivia Rouse Research

How to plot state-by-state data on a map of the U.S. in R

While I usually turn to Carto.com or Datawrapper.de for my mapping needs, I decided to give R a whirl. The following tutorial will take craft beer awards data from Great […]

May 16, 2018June 11, 2018 Aleszu Bajak Data Journalism in R, How to

Six visualizations that explore the extent of overfishing around the world

The global demand for fish is suffocating our oceans. More than 55 percent of the seawater that covers this planet is trawled or lined with hooks in some manner, and […]

April 12, 2018May 30, 2018 Daniel Hentz Roundups

How The Pudding structures stories as visual essays

“We don’t tell 10,000-word stories like the New Yorker,” says Russell Goldenberg, one of the four minds behind the visual storytelling site The Pudding. “We try to examine complex topics […]

March 2, 2018March 7, 2018 Paxtyn Merten Interviews, Research

Getting started with stringr for textual analysis in R

Manipulating characters – a.k.a. non-numerical data – is an essential skill for anyone looking to visualize or analyze text data. This tutorial will go over a few of the base […]

February 23, 2018March 23, 2018 Martin Frigaard Data Journalism in R, How to, Reinventing Local TV News

How PRI’s The World conveyed the death toll of mass shootings using sound

Last November, following two of the deadliest mass shootings in American history, PRI’s The World produced a special on global gun culture titled “How other countries can help us understand […]

February 22, 2018February 21, 2018 Erica Yee Behind the scenes, Interviews

Ten visualizations that tell the story of the 2018 Winter Olympics

For most of February, around 3,000 athletes from 92 countries are competing in Pyeongchang, South Korea in the 2018 Winter Olympic Games. Over the course of the 17 days, there […]

February 21, 2018February 22, 2018 Patrick Strohecker Roundups

How The Pudding discovered swing states will suffer most from job automation

Will robots take your job one day? Probably. But how should that affect your choices in the voting booth? Ilia Blinderman, a data journalist at The Pudding, recently published an […]

February 20, 2018February 20, 2018 N'dea Yancey-Bragg Insights

What can data visualization learn from feminism?

It’s about time to infuse feminism into data science and visualization. At least, that’s what Emerson data visualization and civic tech professor Catherine D’Ignazio says based on her research into […]

February 14, 2018 Paxtyn Merten Insights, Research

How NASA Earth Observatory creates stunning maps to tell technical stories visually

At the heart of any finding by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is a massive amount of data. Its fleet of satellites collect datasets so large they can be hard […]

February 12, 2018June 6, 2018 Colin Bergmann Behind the scenes, Climate Journalism Lab, Interviews

Meet the Media Innovation student who builds Boston Globe data stories

Growing up in an “underdeveloped suburb” in China’s Hebei Province, Yan Wu pored over every page of the newspapers that her father took home from work. Wu’s family couldn’t afford […]

February 5, 2018February 5, 2018 Sukee Bennett Interviews, Research

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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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