Routledge
Published on 6th March, 2020
From tracking down data to symbolising human experiences, this book is your guide to telling more effective, empathetic and evidence-based data stories.
Drawing on cross-disciplinary research and first-hand accounts of projects ranging from public health to housing justice, The Data Storytelling Workbook introduces key concepts, challenges and problem-solving strategies in the emerging field of data storytelling. Filled with practical exercises and activities, the workbook offers interactive training materials that can be used for teaching and professional development. By approaching both ‘data’ and ‘storytelling’ in a broad sense, the book combines theory and practice around real-world data storytelling scenarios, offering critical reflection alongside practical and creative solutions to challenges in the data storytelling process, from collecting hard to find information, to the ethics of visualising difficult subjects like death and human rights.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. A Narrative Approach to Data Storytelling
2. Navigating Data’s Unequal Terrain
3. Visual Data Storytelling
4. Data Storytelling with Maps
5. Future-Proof Principles
Reviews
Authors:
I am a writer, researcher, teacher and workshop leader specialising in data storytelling for civic good. From digging into dusty archives to data visualising absent deaths, I am drawn to the difficult, the messy, the ethically challenging questions that exist around the edges of debates over how we tell stories with science and data. As a consultant and trainer, I collaborate with charities, NGOs, Public Health organisations, investigative journalists and other researchers to explore empathetic and effective ways to tell data stories. I believe that it is often those without access to big budgets and fancy tools that hold the data stories we most need to change the world.
Designers:
My PhD, titled Graphic Medicine Exhibited: Public Engagement with Comics in Curatorial Practice and Visitor Experience since 2010, explores the intersections of the comics medium, health, and exhibition to understand potential methodological approaches and sociocultural values of these experiences. My collaborative projects, namely with Dr Anna Feigenbaum and Aria Alamalhodaei, have explored such topics as public health, data storytelling and visualisation, comics (graphic medicine, graphic social science, data comics), and creative-led knowledge exchange. As a research illustrator I have worked on a number of projects, including the recent The Data Storytelling Workbook (Routledge 2020) and two COVID-19 webcomics. As a curator, I explore how different media, such as comics and zines, can create more emotive connections between different cultures, place, and time, contribute towards decolonisation, and foster social justice and care in upcoming museum professionals.
