October 2016

There were 2 posts published in October 2016 (this is page 1 of 1).

Data Visualization Literacy

Supporting data visualization literacy is key to drive the development of data visualization as a tool to enhance the understanding of critical information by the public. As explained in this Financial Times article: “only 63 per cent of American adults can correctly interpret a scatter plot”. I guess the figure would be similar across other western countries, and even lower in the developing world. Expanding the available vocabulary to data journalists would allow for improved visualizations making sense of complex issues.

The Financial Times Visual Vocabulary

The article mentions the Graphic Continuum as a learning tool, which the Financial Times used as a basis to develop their own Visual Vocabulary. But these attempts fall short of the real objective, which should be educating the general public. The 37% of American adults who can’t understand what a scatterplot is showing won’t turn to these tools for help. Educational efforts should be part of the mission of data journalists to ensure their work is widely understood. This mission can only be achieved on a daily basis, developing our visualizations with the end user in mind. Not to dumb them down, but to provide tools to ensure they can be understood and navigated by anyone.

Data visualization literacy tool from the Financial Times

Online News Comsumption: Video Vs Text (and Text is Winning)

Contrary to what media consultants, gurus and the like may have been saying, text, not video, is still the preferred medium for online news comsumption in the 18-29 age bracket (the so-called “millennials”).

Online news comsumption survey by Pew Research Center

The findings come from the Pew Research Center, but also Reuters Institute published an online news comsumption report outlining similar findings:

Website users in particular remain resistant to online video news with only around 2.5% of average visit time spent on video pages in a range of 30 online news sites; 97.5% of time is still spent with text. Around 75% of respondents to a Reuters Institute survey of 26 countries said they only occasionally (or never) use video news online.

Why do people prefer text over video?

Well, no surprises here. According to respondents in an online news comsumption survey conducted by the Reuters Institute, the main reason (41% respondents) was that reading text was “quicker and more convenient”. But I think we could come up with a lot more reasons, easily:

  • Text is quotable and more easily shareable
  • Text is accesible to people with disabilities
  • Most videos don’t have subtitles. That forces me to turn up the volume / stop listening to music or whatever I was doing.
  • Video demands full attention, text is easily scannable and can be consumed at my own pace.
  • With text I can easily keep switching tabs to attend other matters, then come back and keep reading.
  • Most people avoid streaming video on their mobile phones due to low data plans
  • Most of the time, video doesn’t add any value to the information. See this one as an example.

What kind of videos would work in online news? To find out we should take a look at what works outside online news sites. According to the same RI report:

We find that the most successful off-site and social videos tend to be short (under one minute), are designed to work with no sound (with subtitles), focus on soft news, and have a strong emotional element.