Digital storytelling can offer unprecedented insights into scientific data for both the lay public and scientific researchers, says Samuel Van Ransbeek.

Guest contributor Samuel Van Ransbeek

Data can be made much more engaging when using visualisation techniques.{credit}Image credit: Design Pics/Thinkstock{/credit}

In the century of information, it has become fashionable to make data publicly available. Governments, NGO’s, private companies and others seem to be in a race to make the most data available as soon as possible. However, with petabytes of data being published every day, we have to ask ourselves: What are we going to do with all the data?  Publishing them online is only one part of the job. We need to harness the data so that people can understand and interact with them.

Furthermore, in an era of scientific complexity and with the deluge of data currently being produced by research, it becomes paramount to engage the general public so they do not become distanced from science and important societal issues.

There are various possibilities in making data accessible. Here I’ll give just a few examples of what others are doing to engage the public with scientific data.

Infographics

Infographics are more than just some stacked columns and graphs. They are a visual way of storytelling through data. Infographics reveal the often abstract, statistical data and present them in a format which is easy to absorb. It has become a mainstream phenomenon in contemporary journalism and in mass communication in general. Continue reading →