88 | nº 31, pp. 87-105 | doxa.comunicación

July-December of 2020

Visualisations as a critical information source for data journalism. Analysis of the typology, interactivity...

ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978

1. Introduction

Data journalism is a journalistic tool that enables large numbers of figures to be handled, using numerical analysis, programming, and visualisation techniques (Appelgren and Nygren, 2014; Loosen, 2018). The professional profile of data journalists is not standardised, it evolves as techniques and technologies do, and although the practice differs according to each country, the methods and tools are similar around the world (Nygren, Appelgren and Hüttenrauch, 2012; López-García, Toural-Bran, and Rodríguez-Vázquez, 2016).

Visualisations are an essential element for creating data journalism projects (Herrero-Solana and Rodríguez-Domínguez, 2015). They are the most common form of communication and are usually complementary to the stories’ narrative to make reading more manageable and the content more understandable and contextualised (Nguyen, Shrestha, Germuska, Kim, Hullman, 2019; Ivars-Nicolás, 2019). However, visualisations are considered fundamental for carrying out this media practice and journalism in general because they contribute to the quality of the content, attract users, and allow them to interact with it (Engebretsen, Kennedy, and Weber, 2018). Holmqvist (2005) showed that visual information is what readers devoted most time to and is the content that generates the most interest.

There is a debate about the terms “infographics” and “visualisation”, which are sometimes used interchangeably. Canga Larequi (1994: 141) determined that infographics are a “technique that enables the spread of journalistic information, which is expressed graphically on a written or audiovisual support through the use of computer procedures and allows the viewer to capture the essence of the message visually.” In this sense, Ilinsky (2012) highlighted that infographics differed from visualisation as they combine artistic and technical drawings and incorporate a smaller amount of data. Alcalde (in Sánchez and Sánchez, 2018) reinforces this and states that infographics are usually more straightforward and on paper (although they are also present digitally), while visualisations deal with more study variables and enable users to interact with content. In this research, as in previous data journalism studies, the word visualisation is used as a generic concept to refer to the visual and graphic representation of the information, with or without interactivity, to simplify communication, inquiry, analysis, and understanding of the data (Cairo, 2012; Bradshaw, 2012). For this reason, infographics are considered