Interactive data visualisation, with Adam Frost and Tobias Sturt
Register for our next event on turning audiences from passive viewers into active participants in news and feature stories
Telling stories through data is increasingly common in journalism and other forms of media - but how we present that data and visualise it for our audiences can be crucial in terms of the story’s impact and clarity.
Well-crafted and appealing data visualisations can cut through complexities and get to the facts and heart of a story, giving readers/viewers an immediate sense of what's important or significant in our reporting. Data visualisations can be strikingly beautiful and attention-grabbing – hugely helpful, whether we’re breaking news with the latest statistics or using features to help audiences see something familiar in a new way.
Just imagine, then... how powerful interactive data visualisations can be. Enabling readers to click, scroll, hover over, explore and analyse the data themselves turns them from passive viewers into active participants in our reporting.
In this two-hour online event on Wednesday 15th June at 3pm (UK time), Adam Frost and Tobias Sturt will explain some of the principles of data visualisation and interactive design before working through some stepped and stacked content and interactive charts. They’ll talk through the importance of adding movement, explore animation techniques and how to storyboard it all.
Adam is the former head of data visualisation at the Guardian’s digital agency and his work has appeared on the Guardian, the New Statesman, Buzzfeed and elsewhere. Tobias was head of creative at the Guardian’s digital agency and has been working in digital storytelling for almost two decades using all kinds of media – from web to TV, games and infographics. Adam and Tobias are now directors of Add Two, an agency specialising in data visualisation.
This online masterclass on Wednesday 15th June at 3pm (UK time) is brought to you by the Civic Journalism Lab in association with Newcastle University. It's free and open to anyone, but registration is essential as we'll email you joining instructions a few hours before the masterclass begins.
Register here for this free event.
REWIND: Reporting Muslims and Islam
If you missed our last Civic Journalism Lab event – a discussion panel with Alison Phillips, editor of the Daily Mirror, Darshna Soni, home affairs correspondent for Channel 4 News, Basit Mahmood, freelance journalist and editor of Left Foot Forward, Lexie Kirkconnell-Kawana, head of regulation at IMPRESS, Brian Cathcart, professor of journalism at Kingston University and Rizwana Hamid, director of the Centre for Media Monitoring – fear not: you can play back a video of the discussion on our YouTube channel here.
J-LAB PODCAST: Are you a subscriber yet?
In our most recent J-Lab podcast episode, we spoke with Ivan Kolpakov, editor-in-chief and co-founder of Meduza – Russia’s biggest independent media outlet even though its editors have been based, in exile, in neighbouring Latvia for most of the last 10 years. In our conversation, Ivan explained what life has been like for Russian journalists under Vladimir Putin, a leader who uses the power of TV to spread propaganda and convince the Russian people of his narrative. Ivan described how it's possible to operate a news organisation in exile, and why he believes independent journalism and patience are needed to help Russian people see through the disinformation and lies. Listen here on SoundCloud or here on Apple Podcasts or here on Spotify for this latest in a series of episodes that explores the journalists and stories making the news today.
TELL US: What do you want?
We'd like to make the Civic Journalism Lab and its activities as relevant as possible to the needs and apsirations of professional, community and student journalists. So we've put together this very brief, 10-question survey. Give us just five minutes of your time, and we'll do our best to give you what you want and need.
AND FINALLY: Feel free to leave at any time
We're keen to continue building a valuable forum, resource and network in our north east corner of England (and beyond) for professional, community and student journalists, so we hope that our communications about Civic Journalism Lab events and activities are useful to you. However, if you'd prefer not to receive any more newsletters from us, please unsubscribe or update your subscription settings by clicking the unsubscribe link at the very, very bottom of this email. Thank you!