16.04.2008
Visualization of Information in the Press
Lecture by Alberto Cairo held on November 23rd, 2007 within the context of the Communication Applied Data Visualization Seminar of the Visualizar 07, a broad program of research, reflection and production activities about data visualization and its social, artistic and cultural applications. The first edition took place at Medialab-Prado from November 12th through 28th, 2007.
Related people
Related articles
- Citizens with knowledge, citizens in movement. Access, reuse and visualization of public information: strategic tools for participation
- Towards a Linked Government Data Cloud
- Visualization for the Masses: Making public data more accessible
- Visualizing Information in the Complexity Era
- Data Visualization and Art
- Transparency, Civic Engagement and Data Visualization
The history of graphics in newspapers begins with the press itself. The first newspapers included rough maps presenting visual information to readers in a fast, direct way. With the mass advent of computers at newspaper desks in the 1980s, the use of infography (‘informative graphics’) for transmitting the news really took off. At present, with new technologies constantly appearing at dizzying speed and the hegemony of the Internet, infography is at a fascinating crossroads.
‘Visualization of Information in the Press’ will offer an overview of the history of the use of maps, statistical graphs, and explicative diagrams in the daily press from its inception to the present day. It will also explain the changes taking place currently at leading newspapers around the world such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and El Mundo. Those changes are possible thanks to the use of state-of-the-art tools for information visualization, and to the creation of innovative equipment for handling databases, highly accurate journalism, and multimedia.
The presentation will also analyze the most frequent ethical and technological problems faced by infographic journalists, and the role that infography plays today in the survival of professional journalism as a keystone of democratic governments. Lastly, it will propose needed changes in journalism schools’.