Infographics/
Data Visualisation

Anna Bączkowska, University of Gdansk, Poland
anna.baczkowska@ug.edu.pl

Opinions can be communicated not only verbally, but also graphically. The visual forms of presenting various types of data (usually complex information expressing facts or opinions) in a systematic form is known as infographics. Visualisations of textual or numerical information enhance data interpretation as they present a bird’s eye view of the data at hand, make them more transparent, meaningful, and readable. Infographics are operationalised, inter alia, through maps, lists, line graphs, bubble plots, scatter plots, bar charts, pie charts, and time intelligence. They are often interactive, offering an overview of the data together with tools to drill them down, which empower users to explore the data on their own and enhance data comprehensibility. Lewis and Westlund find infographics based on big data (huge volumes of data counted in tera- and petabytes) are increasingly popular in data journalism, and have a big impact on media industry . And Veglus et al see that infographics are often used in media organisations to visualise user-generated content, which expresses opinion polls or facts, published on social media. Popular software tools used to convert complex data into graphic form comprise Tableau, MS Power BI.

Keywords: interactive graphics, data visualisation, user-generated content

References:
Lewis, S. C., & Westlund, O. (2015). Big data and journalism: Epistemology, expertise, economics, and ethics. Digital Journalism, 3, 447–66.
Veglis, A., Saridou, T., Panagiotidis, K., Karypidou, C., & Kotenidis, E. (2022). Applications of big data in media organisations. Social Sciences, 11(9), 414.