This repo contains resources for students on the MA Data Journalism at Birmingham City University. The course module in Narrative covers a range of techniques for telling data stories across text, video and audio, visual and interactive forms, and web, chat and social platforms.
Most resources for the module can be found in the Narrative Moodle website. This repo contains extra resources and activities specific to data journalism.
Narrative: from media to interactive media aims to give you the skills to critically adapt to both new and existing storytelling formats and platforms.
We begin by introducing basic narrative concepts that can be used to get to grips with any format you might need, or want, to work in. Then we look at specific formats, from writing for the web, and online and social video, to visualisation and interactivity. By the end of the module you should be able to identify how to approach a specific story across different platforms - and you'll be telling one story in three different formats.
- Module Leader: Paul Bradshaw (paul.bradshaw@bcu.ac.uk) 0121 331 5367
- Twitter.com/paulbradshaw
- Room: MP364
- Initiate and develop innovative, conventional or emerging narrative techniques to produce a media artefact within an identified professional context
- Identify and critically evaluate narrative techniques used within relevant media
You will also be expected to feed your own experiences into each class - and your own problems and questions - rather than coming to the sessions with nothing to contribute or build on. As independent learners the emphasis is on you to drive your learning forward through conversation rather than accept it passively.
By the end of this week you should be able to identify the genre of a piece of media content, including stories that you are planning, and use that to improve your own storytelling.
- Lecture: Narrative concepts
- Workshop & reading: see Moodle
- Task: Critical review of news structure in data stories
By the end of this week you should be able to identify narrative elements in potential stories and begin to map out potential stories in areas of interest.
- Lecture: Elements of narrative for factual storytellers
- Workshop & reading: see Moodle
- Task: Identify how narrative tools are used in data stories
By the end of this week you should be able to describe and execute various techniques for telling stories in shortform media (e.g. social media updates), longform formats, and identify structure in genre forms such as the inverted pyramid.
- Lecture 1: Writing for the web - BASIC principles
- Lecture 2: Narrative structure and how it can help us organise information into stories
- Workshop & reading: see Moodle
- Task: Critical review of structure in shortform (social media) and longform data stories
- Additional reading:
By the end of this week you should be able to outline how longer stories and feature formats are structured differently from medium form 'inverted pyramid' stories. You should be able to identify different genres and the rules they adhere to, and write your own stories using those genres.
- Lecture 1: Genre and structure in factual storytelling (14')
- Lecture 2: Storytelling techniques: temporality, pacing, the narrator role and "show, don't tell" (12')
- Workshop: using an interview transcript to explore structure and genre
- Task: Write a story in a particular genre
- Reading: Data journalism on radio, audio and podcasts
By the end of this week you should be able to identify techniques used in social media storytelling, particularly the use of visual devices such as emojis, gifs and memes. You should be able to use some of these visual devices to tell stories across platforms.
- Video lecture 1: Visual storytelling (21')
- Video lecture 2: Writing for social and shortform (22')
- Reading: Writing for social media and chat apps
- Workshop: visual storytelling
- Task: Create some visual storytelling and social storytelling about your own work
During this week you should be consolidating your learning so far, developing your skills on one or more editorial project, reviewing examples of data-driven storytelling, and continuing to read widely around the subject.
By the end of this week you should be able to identify techniques used in creating 'native' video for social media and the web, including the difference between social and broadcast video,. You should be able to use those techniques to plan and create multimedia on a range of media platforms.
- Lecture 1: Making video for online and social: the 5 types (24')
- Lecture 2: Four roles online video plays (22')
- Reading: Narrative ch5 - Narrative Time (Murphet)
- Workshop: planning video for online/social
- Task: Create some video for your story using the techniques, and write about the process on Medium OR analyse a video in the genre you’re planning to produce and publish the analysis on Medium
- Read: Data journalism in broadcast news and video: 27+ examples to inspire and educate
By the end of this week you should be able to explain and engage with considerations when introducing interactivity into a narrative - including the role of hypertext, games, place and interactive and social storytelling - and plan your own interactive story.
- Lecture 1: Dimensions of interactivity (14')
- Lecture 2: Genres of interactivity (26')
- Read: Manovich (1999) Database as a Symbolic Form
- Workshop: brainstorming interactivity for a story
- Task: Create some interactivity for your story using the techniques and/or tools, and write about the process on Medium OR analyse interactivity in the genre you’re planning to produce and publish the analysis on Medium
- Suggested additional reading:
By the end of this week you should be able to plan stories involving numbers - whether that is using on-screen graphics, visualisation or maps and other visualisation devices, or case studies, metaphors and analogies.
- Lecture part 1: editorial devices in visualisation (50')
- Lecture part 2: Choosing the chart that tells the story (55')
- Workshop: telling a number story with Datawrapper
- Task: Continued work on assignment
- Reading: Tufte - Data-Ink and Graphical Redesign
- Suggested additional reading:
By the end of this week you should be able to plan multi-story narratives such as programmes, podcasts, publications and website UX, and explain the considerations and critical issues involved.
You should also be able to identify how 'transmedia' narratives operate across platforms, and the role of curation, selection and editing in narrative. You should also be able to execute your own curation-based narrative, and begin to plan your transmedia project.
- Lecture 1: Transmedia and factual storytelling (27')
- Workshop: Planning a Transmedia Project
- Read: The Revenge of the Origami Unicorn: Seven Principles of Transmedia Storytelling (First Two - read next part too)
- Planning a data story across platforms (assignment element 2)
- Suggested additional reading:
By the end of this section you should be able to identify opportunities for curatorial storytelling, such as email newsletters and listicles. You should be able to identify the generic qualities of those forms and plan and execute them in your own field..
- Workshop & reading: see Moodle
- Task: Review and revised production of multiplatform data story