Presentation at the Humboldt Foundation's International Journalists' Programmes 2020 about the changes within journalism around using interactivity for telling stories, and communicating uncertainty. The slides also include recommendations around avoiding mistakes.

1. Storytelling in the
database era
@PaulBradshaw
Birmingham City University, BBC Data Unit

2. 1. How the internet created new
ways to report on research
2. Why journalism doesn’t like
uncertainty — and how that’s
changing
3. Mistakes that researchers
and journalists make

3. 1. How the internet created new
ways to report on research
2. Why journalism doesn’t like
uncertainty — and how that’s
changing
3. Mistakes that researchers
and journalists make

4. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/dialect-quiz-map.html

5. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-simulator/

6. “Historically, the artist made a unique
work within a particular medium.
Therefore the interface and the work
were the same; in other words, the
level of an interface did not exist. With
new media, the content of the work
and the interface become separate. It
is therefore possible to create
different interfaces to the same
material. ”

7. ‘Clickable interactives’
Tools and web apps
Counters/countdowns
Ergodic stories
Personalisation
Games
Chatbots
Simulations
Interactivity
has become generic
Polls
Quizzes
Image maps
Interactive video
Interactive maps
Timelines
Sliders
AR
Bradshaw 2017

8. 1. How the internet created new
ways to report on research
2. Why journalism doesn’t like
uncertainty — and how that’s
changing
3. Mistakes that researchers
and journalists make

9. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/health/disease-modeling-coronavirus-cases-reopening/

10. https://gizmodo.com/the-new-york-times-live-presidential-meter-is-fucking-w-1788732314
https://www.fastcompany.com/90459366/the-most-hated-data-visualization-in-politics-is-back-to-spike-your-blood-pressure

11. https://onlinejournalismblog.com/2020/05/18/coronavirus-3-ways-journalists-need-to-get-to-grips-with-uncertainty-during-the-pandemic/

12. https://www.ft.com/content/a3145dc2-edff-4c86-bdfd-fedde6fbc2a2

13. https://rt.live/

14. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/covid-forecasts/

15. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/health/disease-modeling-coronavirus-cases-reopening/

16. https://qz.com/1848674/how-to-interpret-the-specificity-sensitivity-of-antibody-tests/

17. https://projects.economist.com/us-2020-forecast/president
https://projects.economist.com/us-2020-forecast/president/how-this-works

18. 1. How the internet created new
ways to report on research
2. Why journalism doesn’t like
uncertainty — and how that’s
changing
3. Mistakes that researchers
and journalists make

19. https://www.henrylau.co.uk/

20. https://www.henrylau.co.uk/

21. https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/18482234.coronavirus-brighton-hove-r-number-might-1/

22. 1. Give us the data
2. Make each story visual
3. Provide contact details
4. Be explicit before and after
about what the research does
NOT say

23. https://github.com/tomwhite/covid-19-uk-data

24. https://github.com/bbc-data-unit

25. 1. We’ve entered a database era
of new storytelling genres
2. We are learning how to tell
stories of uncertainty — and
how to read those (but
interactivity is also a challenge)
3. Research isn’t always a clear
enough story: use visuals, share
data, be accessible

26. Humboldt 2020
Questions!
@PaulBradshaw
Birmingham City University, BBC Data Unit