Anna Feigenbaum - The Data Storytelling Workbook

From tracking down information 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 tracking down hard to find information, to the ethics of visualising difficult subjects like death and human rights.

Anna Feigenbaum is a Principal Academic in Digital Storytelling at Bournemouth University where she runs the Civic Media Hub, a knowledge exchange enterprise that specialises in data storytelling for human rights, social equity, and health and wellbeing. Anna regularly publishes in media outlets and academic journals. She is a co-author of Protest Camps (2013) and author of Tear Gas (2017).

Aria Alamalhodaei is an independent writer and researcher. She received her Master of Arts in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art. She has written extensively about science, technology, and art for academic and popular publications.

Anna Feigenbaum +
Aria Alamalhodaei

Design and typesetting:
Minute Works

Comics illustrations:
Alexandra Alberda

Bournemouth University
Civic Media Hub website:
www.civicmedia.io

First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor& Francis Group, an informa business

2020 Anna Feigenbaum and Aria Alamalhodaei; individual contributions where named, the contributors; images, the photographers and illustrators.

The right of Anna Feigenbaum and Aria Alamalhodaei to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book

ISBN: 978-1-138-05210-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-05211-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-16801-2 (ebk)

Typeset in Neue Haas Unica and IBM Plex Mono

Publisher's Note: This book has been prepared from camera-ready copy provided by the authors.

For all those becoming data storytellers

The Civic Media Hub came to life through internal funding from Bournemouth University for initiatives that sought to bring together academics, students and practitioners to co-create knowledge and resources. That first grant funded our BU Datalabs training project in 2015 leading to many more small pockets of funding, partnerships, and creative enterprises. Together these enabled us to grow from an initial idea into an internationally recognised Civic Media Hub.

Thanks to the early dreamers who helped envision the Civic Media Hub: Einar Thorsen, Phillipa Gillingham, Duncan Golicher, Edward Apeh and Dan Jackson. Alongside them, our wonderful research assistants provided the enthusiasm and open-mindedness to bring our most bizarre ideas to life. Over the past five yea rs we have watched them g row from RAs to esteemed collaborators and project leaders: Daniel Weissmann, Ozlem Demirkol and Alexandra Alberda, youre the heart and soul of these projects.

In more recent years, Isabella Rega, Brad Gyori, Phil Wilkinson, Mike Sunderland and Andy White joined, stretching the possibilities of what we could do with data storytelling. Thanks also to Karen Fowler-Watt, Shelley Thompson and Julian McDougall for their unwavering support through all weve tried to manifest, including this workbook.

Tom Sanderson from the Centre for Investigative Journalism has offered invaluable insight, energy and access to an amazing network of passionate practitioners, many of whom are featured here. Omega Research Foundation and Public Health Dorset, we are so grateful for our adventures in data storytelling that now fill these pages.

Thanks are also due to Routledge, and particularly Niall Kennedy, who invited us to dream up a textbook unlike other textbooks. Before leaving Routledge Niall made it possible for us to co-create this workbook with our hugely talented and incredibly collaborative graphic design studio Minute Works. Partnering with Jimmy Edmondson and Dom Latham has not only led to five years of beautiful data storytelling artefacts, but also to seeing research as inseparable from how we visually communicate it to empower audiences.

A huge thank you goes to everyone around the world who hosted us, partnered with us, let us do weird things at your events, encouraged our experiments and reminded us time and again that it is ok to break the moulds, challenge the canons, and refuse the silos of academia.

Finally, this workbook would not be possible without our students. Teachers are only able to be as imaginative as their pupils and institutions allow. It is a blessing to work at a university, where when you walk into a room with an emoji shit pillow and a bag of Sharpies, everyone dives right in.