The Role of Psychological Approaches in Data Journalism Visualisations

Abstract

Data journalism is the process of analysing, clarifying, and visualising data to convey a story and present the news more effectively. Data visualisation, the method that allows communicating large amounts of data, can improve viewers’ understanding of news and can increase interaction (Bradshaw 2010). The minimalistic theory of the “data-ink” ratio, which can design effective data visualisations, explains that ink should only be used to display the data. Data visualisations with right selection of visual channels can influence memory, attention, and news comprehension (Pan, 2010; Smilek, Dixon & Merikle, 2002). The purpose of this study is to explore if and how visual designers assess psychological principles in journalistic data visualisation. Data visualisations from two well-known organisations (the BBC and the Guardian) presenting COVID-19 information were collected. The analysis was effectuated based on a ‘decoding model’ initiated by Munzner (2014) to identify their visual attributes. The findings concluded that media organisations consider and apply psychological metrics in the visual design process. Interesting colour differences between visualisations were identified and discussed. A limitation was that the sample of the study was small. Future research could include more data visualisations or could use interviews to understand better the way visual designers practice psychology.