Data Visualization and the News

Infographics are a major attribute to many of my blog posts, while they can be aesthetically pleasing, they are also able to relay information quickly without having to sift through data or read the clunky language that could relay some of the statistics, if one had the time to sit and read them all that is.  Some of the elements found in infographics can be as basic as images drawn up in a kindergarten classroom to help children understand a concept better.  Which leads to the question, can this be applied to adults?  The answer is yes, and many up and coming tech companies are using more infographics to help consumers and partners better understand concepts, statistics, and so on.  In a video that can by found on visual.ly, a website devoted to aggregating infographics, shows how effective they are, the video is of course, made up of infographics.  Visual.ly is also a great way to spend an afternoon as the pleasing aesthetics, mixed with statistics and definitions are helpful in understanding today's major conflicts and issues as they have become increasingly complicated.

News organizations today, while trying to affectively become more innovative, are finding new ways to be immersive and interactive. Infographs are not as immersive, but they do change the age old model of graphs and line charts. Even with the use of line charts and graphs, they updated it to convey information easier.

For example, take this infographic on the BP oil spill and the flow of news that followed.  (Click to enlarge.)

This graphic has a lot of numbers that could easily be lost in an article, but through the use of color, sizies, and mediums, the data is made digestable.  Time magazine has been using more infographics as well and many news papers rely on them today.  However, as this following infograph shows, they aren't new, as can be seen from the New York Journal infograph in 1898 which displays an image explaining the explosion behind the U.S.S. Maine.

 and the use of the infograph is not necessarily new, but more and more employers are also starting to receive infographic resumes.  It depends on the industry, but in areas of publics relations, marketing, and graphic design, the infographic resume has become the choice in making oneself stand out in the job market.  Now take Esquire magazine who applied the augmented reality technology to their magazines. In this demo video, we can see how the technology can be applied to an everyday magazine, making it more interactive and this technology can be applied to infographics allowing users and readers to take what information they want.  Which is likely to be the next step for infographics, news media and technology.

Revisiting Bin Laden's (Imagined) Assassination

Exactly one year ago, the contemporary world was informed that after ten years of hiding, US Navy SEALs assassinated Osama bin Laden, the individual who claimed responsibility behind the 9/11 attacks. The decade-old event, which forever affected our understanding of security both domestically and internationally, also changed news production and consumption practices. As so, the continuing debate over his actual death, a mission otherwise known as Operation Neptune Spear, and the public's understanding of it was not engaged solely through news articles and press releases, but through broadcast media's incessant pitch for immersive news.

President Obama in the Situation Room, May 2011

Nonny de la Pena, yesterday's featured journalist and professor at the USC Annenberg School of Communication, expanded on these practices through a history of virtuality in news dissemination and civic discourse by concentrating on her past work with virtual news stories.

Using the same software technology, Second Life, which De la Pena described, consider the following YouTube clip on bin Laden's assassination in relation to the nature of virtual news. Given the strict confidentiality prohibiting any media coverage prior and during the event, it is understandable that virtual media was an inevitable choice to attract viewers to tune in to the news. With dynamic scenes, rich audio and music, and crafted storytelling viewers were undoubtedly immersed in the environment of SEAL operation, despite the video description disclaiming, "this is not meant to portray actual events".  Since the public was censored of proof of his death, the next best thing was to recreate it.

The CBS video below more effectively illustrates the event using animated maps, infographics, archived footage, press releases, and most importantly, a simulated reenactment of the operation.

Though the simulation was constructed according to a collection of interviews between soldiers and White House officials, its accuracy can only be contested as much as its purpose as a simulation and not actual footage. The continually digitizing world increasingly demands virtual footage due to content output pressures, however its usefulness and accuracy must be negotiated between both journalists and viewers.

The New York Times, a financial basket-case?

The New York Times is often thought of as one of the largest news organizations in the United States and is also the current record holder for taking home the most pulitzer prizes as well.  Since the early days, circulation of newspaper print has been the bread and butter of most newspaper organizations for financial revenue.  Evidently, with the mass transition into the digital medium, digital media and the news has taken the market by storm, reducing potential revenue of physical print circulation. This lead to financial set backs that inevitably lead to massive debt, with one of the creditors being Carlos Slim.  The New York Times has cut back on many sub-divisions within the company such as selling Regional Media Group to dig its way out of debt.

The interesting part of this story is that the New York Times was able to pay back their debt with Carlos Slim three and a half years early which saved them a quite bit of money from accruing interest. In class, we talked about the significance of Google's allocation of ads in their search engine. It accounted for the majority of their annual revenue, and even more so after they developed specific algorithms to help narrow down and personalize an individual's search results with corresponding ads.

As shown in this image of Google's financial ledger for 2009, nearly 97% of their gross annual revenue came from advertisements.

Just like Google, The New York Times attributed much of their revenue from ads. With the growing popularity for digitized media, it is hard to imagine paper print circulation having any chance in the consumer market. This transition into the digital media scape could lead to large news corporations like the New York Times to lose paper circulation revenue and establish an inverse ratio with ad revenue right? Surprisingly, that is not with the New York Times. While print circulation is on a steady increase by increments of three percent a year give or take, ad revenue is slowly declining by the same amount respectively. Although the company is barely holding its own financially, especially with the five year news depression, it's able to "tread water" for now. There are some interesting points here in regards to why circulation of print news is slowly rising with ads declining every year. Some students in class stated that reading something on a machine or device is a difference experience from reading a physical paper. Although a highly subjective case, it may be what's keeping the New York Times afloat.

News, Numbers, Infographs, and Syria

When an image can provide information and news faster, it becomes an effective form of data communication.  We have all heard of the deaths in Syria and the protests, but when transformed into an image, much like a photo, the impact is stronger.  In the realm of numbers and journalism, it can be difficult to convey data to an ADHD audience, numbers becomes exactly that, numbers.  Journalism becomes ineffective when it loses the ability to draw an audience in, and it essentially loses all value in information.  Inforgraphics have been on the rise as it is able to convey meaning, information, and if created with skill, can be impactful. 

It's clique to say that an image can be worth a thousand words, but infographics can do more than a thousand words can do in an article sometimes. Note how the above infograph does not give the actual number of deaths, which is currently estimated 9000.  The infograph does however, provide an image of 9000 men, women, and children, the children are in red.  This communicates the level of destruction done to the people of Syria far better than any numbers given in an article.  

The full image can be seen in detail here.

Social Media Transforms the World of Sports

You can spot the effects of social media integration in journalism everywhere these days. One news division that social media outlets affect significantly lies within the realm of sports. Not surprisingly, sports fans now prefer to obtain their sports news from social media outlets, such as Twitter and Facebook, rather than national news websites. In the event that a fan reads about the field goal percentage of his/her favorite football star, that player's Twitter handle will appear on the bottom of the article, just for kicks. 

An infographic(which can be found here: Sports Social Media) from the sports medicine company KT Tape details the specific ways in which social media has changed the sports world during the last four years. 

"Box scores and game recaps can still be found in the newspaper and on TV, but fans are looking for more than that now. They want live updates, active participation, and behind-the-scene looks at their favorite sports teams and players. Social media has given sports fans virtual box seats." 

"To engage sports superstars, fans used to have to write letters or hang around after the game to try to get their ball or card signed. Now, social media allows fans to reach the players. Some professional athletes specifically go out of their way to engage their fans, which can pay off for the athletes in some cases." 

The above infographic shows that as Twitter and Facebook continues to revolutionize, change and personalize consumer culture, news outlets have to welcome social media to "the game" in order to sustain their operations. 

FaceBlog

Out of all the social media sites available to the public, Facebook is one of the most prominent.  It not only allows individuals to connect with others all around the world, but also provides an outlet for businesses to market their products and has brought a whole new level to viral marketing.  Although it may be one of the fastest ways to exchange information, it is often criticized because it allows people to share ideas at the click of a button which somewhat undermines the ideas being shared.  With that being said, while I may not use Facebook as a reliable news source, it is embarrassing to admit I often discover breaking news from what my friends post on Facebook; for example, I found out that Osama Bin Laden was dead on Facebook.

From marketing, to connecting with friends, to being a news source, it is obvious that Facebook can function as many different tools depending on the user.  Recently I came across a blog called AllFacebook: The Unofficial Facebook Blog that posts excerpts about Facebook all day everyday.  It provides information on what Facebook is doing as a company, for example, their recent purchase of Instagram.  It also posts information on how to get more "likes" on Facebook, who to market to on Facebook, the war between kids and parents on Facebook and political parties using Facebook.  This blog shows just how big Facebook has gotten because it not only has an audience that uses it's site for social media purposes, but also has followers who are interested in Facebook as a brand.  In a way, this blog kind of acts like a Facebook for Facebook where people can posts updates specifically about FB and make comments all pertaining to the FB world.
http://allfacebook.com/

Traditional Journalism No More?

As we've been discussing in class, the style and composition of traditional journalism methods are rapidly becoming replaced by new media methods of reporting. Today, we had a discussion about what type of newspaper (print or digital) hooks today's audience? Do we enjoy sitting down with that black and white printed newspaper, or do we prefer reading snippets of tweets or headlines from mobile newspaper apps as ways to get our information?

On the very interesting and relevant Mediabistro blog, 10,000 Words: Where Journalism and Technology Meet, Mona Zhang wrote a piece on how today's journalists are required to "don different hats." Journalists must now be well versed in a multitude of different specialities, including photography, video, writing, reporting, etc. No longer can a successful journalist be just a journalist reporting on a story. The article also touches on the idea of citizen journalism and how audiences are legitimizing the news they hear. Audiences are frequently trying to decipher what news is real and what isn't, from the information they get from multiple social media and online sources.

Additionally, check out this infographic from Mediabistro's AllTwitter: The Unofficial Twitter Resource:

You can view the infographic in full size here.