Data-Driven Storytelling Techniques : Analysis of a Curated Collection of Visual Stories

TLDR: A qualitative analysis of 45 stories collected from news organizations' online presences recommended by popular visualization blogs, or featured on storytelling tools websites is presented in this paper, with a focus on specific stories from the collection that exemplify the technique.

Abstract: The art of storytelling with visualization has rapidly evolved over the past few years. Advancements in web-based visualization technology and the rapid adoption of data-driven documents (D3) fostered new, dynamic data-driven storytelling on the Web. The chapter reports on a qualitative analysis of 45 stories collected from news organizations' online presences recommended by popular visualization blogs, or featured on storytelling tools websites. It details each of the categories and their associated techniques. For each technique, the chapter draws attention to specific stories from the collection that exemplify the technique. A key difference of storytelling from open-ended exploration is that authors impose a structure to a story and frequently provide navigation aids. Another technique to enhance navigation is the use of breadcrumbs to communicate where in the story the reader is. In most cases these breadcrumbs also provide the reader direct access to corresponding locations in the story.