Data Visualization... In Space!

A lot of people mistake data journalism and power journalism for simply putting numbers into perspective and using massive data sets to find outliers and trends. While that is true, what you do with those outliers and trends after you've located them can really take a story to the next level. Sure you could just simply relay your findings in the traditional for of prose or you could add some extra punch to your numbers and utilize a data visualization that works for your story.

In my Data Journalism class on February 23rd, our class was visited by data visualization expert and University of Oregon professor, Nicole Dahmen. Professor Dahmen noted that human beings can process images 60,000 times faster than we can process text. Now that's power journalism. Dahmen also runs her own blog on the power of data visualization and how it is being utilized in the digital age.

There are a lot of good examples of data visualization out in the world today; the example I am going to cover in this post comes via Josh Stearns blog entitled Writings on Media, Culture, Nature, and the Media. Stearns is the director of journalism and sustainability for the Geraldine Dodge Foundation and he included a sciencenews.org piece named The Martian Diaries, in which the author creates a vast interactive diary scrapbook of the Mars Curiosity Rover, on his list of best online journalism and storytelling of 2015 contributions. The piece is filled with data visualizations, tweets from the Curiosity Rover's twitter account, maps of the rover's journey, as well as photos, videos and gifs of the rover's activity during it's two and a half year stay on Mars' surface.

A screenshot of the homepage of The Martian Diaries

What makes The Martian Diaries successful is it's interactivity bar at the top of the page that allows you to skim through the important days (or sols as they are called on Mars) to streamline the use of the page and eliminate monotonous scrolling.

You can click on each sol to fast forward through Curiosity's journey

Another successful feature of the piece lies in the simplicity of the numerous diary entries. There is usually no more than a paragraph or two describing the events of any given sol and the prose is paired with one or several pieces of additional content to give the information in the entry better context. The diary entries are playfully written through the first person view of the curiosity rover itself and gives the piece a more personal feel despite the massive scientific importance of the subject matter.

The graphic on the left depicts the direction water would have flowed down a specific crater

I was hard pressed to find a flaw in this piece and can easily see why Mr. Stearns chose this as a favorite contribution to journalism and storytelling in 2015. The only complaint I have is that the page itself is kind of drab and feels like it could use some punching up for something as vast and imagery heavy as the never ending frontiers of space. The visuals that are provided in the content itself are solid and allowed me to look past the blandness of the page until I was actively searching for flaws. All-in-all though, sciencenews.org truly has created a wonderful addition to the world of data visualization in journalism. Another important feature worth pointing out before I end this post, lies at the end of the page: it allows for continuous additions of more entries so that this piece can keep growing alongside the Curiosity's journey. I know I'll be keeping up with it; I hope you will too.