After digesting a constant stream of coronavirus coverage, readers can become immune to the staggering death tolls and barrage of statistics presented to them; the Reuters Graphics desk is finding ways to deliver information in a way that makes an emotional connection with the reader.
After digesting a constant stream of coronavirus coverage, readers can become immune to the staggering death tolls and barrage of statistics presented to them. Most of the coronavirus information we visualise represents human beings, something we tend not to emphasise when portraying as bars or dots. One key consideration on the Reuters Graphics desk is finding ways to deliver information in a way that makes an emotional connection with the reader. This could range from powerful content in a project, such as our analysis of obituary pages in a local Italian newspaper, or implementing visualisation techniques that remind the reader we are talking about people, such as our human tree map in a piece looking at the heavy death toll in northern Italy. The same project opened with a powerful calculation of how often people are dying in the Lombardy region. We can also focus on human story angles such as our data-driven project on South Korea’s “Patient 31” who initiated the world’s largest infection cluster by not practicing social distancing, our graphic looking at super spreaders in China, or a project that uses 3D modelling to illustrate the cramped homes that millions of Tokyo residents are sheltering in under a state of emergency. Join us to go in-depth on how the team approaches pieces like this and the techniques used to deliver these projects.
Suggested Speaker(s)
- Christine Chan
Graphics News Editor, Reuters - Simon Scarr
Deputy Global Editor, Graphics, Reuters