Application of visualization technologies in journalism to enhance public knowledge

Journalism has always been concerned with reporting on, and making sense of, important public conversations, with the purpose of providing citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing. Journalistic methods have been largely based on the gathering of information through observation, interviewing and research. Recent progress in web-based digital tools for data analysis and representation, as well as a trend towards in-depth journalism, have provided journalists with the ability to obtain, interrogate and give graphic form to large amounts of information that might otherwise be dull or hard to understand. The application of visualization tools in journalism, with particular emphasis on the preparation, manipulation and visual representation of complex data, both structured and unstructured, were discussed in this workshop. Invited speakers, including leading industry practitioners and researchers, presented advances on these and related topics.