Data Storytelling

Introduction

This class is focused on how to tell stories with data to present to someone. We will learn through case studies, examples and hands-on work with tools and technologies. We will introduce basic methods for research, cleaning and analysing datasets, but the focus is on creative methods and media for data presentation and storytelling. We will consider the emotional, aesthetic and practical effects of different presentation methods as well as how to develop metrics for assessing impact.

Objectives

Participants will learn techniques for finding a story in data, building a basic set of tool-assisted data analysis skills.
Participants will build things that tell data-driven stories with a rich set of digital and non-digital tools, online and offline.
Participants will practice arts- and rhetoric-based approaches to telling data-driven stories.
Participants will learn to connect data stories to meaningful, situated social action.
Participants will learn basic techniques for measuring the impact of data-driven storytelling.
Participants will learn basic ethnographic and anthropological approaches to identifying and researching audiences.