This document provides background information on infographics and data visualization. It discusses how infographics turn complex data into visual images that are easier to understand. Historically, images have played an important role in communication before widespread literacy. The document also examines several theoretical perspectives on how infographics democratize information and allow information to reach a global audience more effectively. It then discusses applications of infographics in journalism, education, and providing information to audiences. Overall, the document argues that infographics are an important communication tool for making complex ideas clearer and more accessible to modern online audiences.

1. RUNNING HEAD: INFOGRAPHICS
Infographics: getting the message
By Jennifer Leask and Kris Hodgson
Dr. Mark Wolfe
Comm 504
University of Alberta
Nov. 1, 2015

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Table of Contents
Table of Contents..................................................................................................................... 1
Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 2
Background.............................................................................................................................. 2
Historical Context................................................................................................................ 2
Infographics turn data into an image ................................................................................ 3
Infographics during a crisis ................................................................................................ 4
Theoretical Perspectives ......................................................................................................... 5
Images, information Control and Democracy................................................................... 5
Visualizing Communication................................................................................................ 6
A Global Audience............................................................................................................... 6
Data Journalism and Visualization........................................................................................ 7
Real World Applications of Infographics and Data Visualization ..................................... 8
Newsroom resources............................................................................................................ 8
Education.............................................................................................................................. 8
Style and substance.............................................................................................................. 9
Information access ............................................................................................................. 10
CONCLUSION.......................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
References .............................................................................................................................. 12
Appendix A: Data Journalism Course Offerings at Canadian Universities.................... 15

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Introduction
As journalistic organizations have moved away from the traditional split-media lines
of print, radio and television and moved online with multimedia delivery platforms, the way
they present information has evolved. The purpose of this paper is to explore how turning
complex information into graphic, sometimes interactive, images for an online audience,
known as data visualizations or infographics, serves to better deliver that information in an
understandable way. While graphical interpretation and illustrations have been a tool in news,
marketing and communications for as long as people have been able to publish them, the
difference today is the growth in interactivity, improved access to the technology to produce
the images and the ongoing need for better understanding of complex ideas. Through an
exploration of the ascendency of the image in modern communications and a foundation in
communications theory, we will identify the reasons infographics and data visualization serve
a need for the modern news consumer: graphics make complex ideas clear, the global internet
audience is comfortable with the proliferation of online illustrations and as we enter a time
where we are reading more content at a faster rate, images allow us to dissect ideas at a pace
that will be conducive to understanding.
Background
Historical Context
Reading text has been a capability in development by the human brain for the last
5,500 years (Wolf & Barzillai, 2009). Before the development of modern alphabetic writing,
as opposed to character-based languages like Chinese and Japanese, people read pictures.
Consider the sculptural art around Notre Dame, the Catholic cathedral in Paris, France.
Because most parishioners were illiterate until the mid-nineteenth century, the sculptures
were used as a way to explain Christianity to those who could not read the bible. While the
written language has been developing over time, widespread literacy is a more recent
phenomenon and much of the world still struggles with basic reading skills. According to the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 785 Million people cannot
read and 14 countries have literacy rates lower than 50 per cent, (United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2015).
Throughout most of the developed world, literacy rates are much higher and many
countries have had a rich reading and culture of literacy. Over the last century, the image has
begun to re-ascend through media like television, photographs and now through the Internet

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(Benitez, 2009). The globalization of communication has allowed the image, instead of text
alone, to become essential to online communications. While concrete numbers are hard to
calculate, one estimate by the Swedish scholar Mikael Parkvall was that 80 per cent of people
speak 1.69 languages, not enough to be truly bilingual, meaning the majority of the world can
only communicate well in one language. However, communicating through images can be a
much more efficient way to cross the language barrier, making people more skilled at reading
images once again, (Benitez, 2009).
Infographics turn data into an image
Infographics are used in a wide variety of applications but are most commonly used
by media departments and graphic designers to transform complex information into easy-to-
understand pieces. As we consume more news and information on a daily basis, infographics
are great at showing patterns and trends with large datasets. At the New York Times, there is a
whole department dedicated to Interactive News Technology (INT). This department's
primary focus is “making news products that engage the user and that often use a database to
populate the information. The data came come from a variety of sources or can be the result
of user input. These presentations can include interactive maps, visualizations, timelines and
graphics,” (Royal, 2010, pg. 7).
Infographics outside of news departments at various media outlets are also used in
many ways: to help ease panic during emergencies, identify evacuation routes on airplanes
and provide instructions to those where literacy may be an issue. For example, the World
Health Organization in partnership with Unicef and the Community Health Global Network
used infographics to help educate the public in Liberia during the Ebola crisis (Chgn.org,
2014).

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When misinformation was being circulated by the media surrounding the amount of
radiation leaking from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011, Rama
Hoetzlein, an interactive media artist, took it upon himself to create an infographic that cut
through the clutter. One comment expressed the phenomenally positive response: “Your
charts are providing useful context and calming the anxiety for many people living here.
Thank you for making the time to do this. My Japanese friends are grateful that there are
people all around the world who are using their talents to help them” (Hoetzlein, 2012,
pg.118).
Infographics during a crisis
During a crisis, journalists scramble to report technical information and strive for
accuracy, as the world is watching. Unfortunately, during the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in
2011, several media outlets broadcast misinformation in an effort to be first. “The media is
certainly profiting off of drumming up public fervor with wild nuclear scare stories.
Unfortunately, many of these stories appear to be utterly factually inaccurate,” (Mick, 2011,
dailytech.com). Hoetzlein applied facts from verified sources and turned them into an
infographic which compared global disasters and showed the context of ground-level
radiation in Fukushima. “When the project began, I imagined the Fukushima radiation map
serving as a public grounding point for understanding radiation levels, providing a
counterpoint to the news media. I presented each fact and recorded level as objectively as
possible to reduce fears regarding widespread radiation,” (Hoetzlein, 2012, pg.118). As
shown below in an infographic created by James Abundis of the Boston Globe on March 16,
2011, (Abundis, J., 2011) images are an effective way to display data from several events.
They help to put issues like radiation exposure in perspective when there are similar disasters
throughout history.
Source: http://patrickgarvin.com/blog/?p=940

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Educational Infographics
While journalism is the main area where infographics are used, in all levels of education,
teachers can use them to help students understand concepts through “visual appeal, comprehension
and retention” (Kibar, 2014, pg. 456). Whether you are a student or a consumer of the news, there are
three types of learners: visual, auditory and kinesthetic. Infographics can help bridge the gap between
the types to appeal to several audiences. “Visual literacy allows a deeper interaction with messages of
all kinds and introduces the process of analytical thinking about representation and meaning...teaching
visual literacy helps students [readers or viewers] interpret visual media and access a much broader
and more extensive body of learning and comprehension in education” (Kibar, 2014, pg. 456).
Theoretical Perspectives
Images, information Control and Democracy
As noted by Harold Innis in Media in Ancient Empires, it was the Babylonians and
Assyrians who formed pictures on blocks of clay (a time-based medium) which only reached
a limited audience, but lasted for thousands of years, (Crowley & Heyer, p. 25). The
Sumerians took the ideas introduced by the Babylonians and took it one step further to create
cuneiform. “Cuneiform writing was partly syllabic and partly ideographic, or representative
of single words … Pictographs and ideograms took on abstract phonetic values and the study
of script became linked to the study of language,” (Innis, in Crowley & Heyer., p.28). This
development of language, as Innis explains, was controlled by “priests, scribes, teachers and
judges,” (Innis, in Crowley & Heyer., p.26) which is paralleled by the accessibility of
computer generated graphic images, which until recently, were tools available only to people
fluent in computer programming languages or complex software packages.
Eric Havelock’s work in The Greek Legacy, has a similar parallel: he theorizes that
the introduction of Greek letters, which in his view “democratized literacy,” (Crowley &
Heyer., p.53) in that more people, including children, could be literate. Using images to
explain complex scientific, technical or social topics allows more people to access the
information through this new pictorial language. This should lead to a greater understanding
of these topics, democratizing information across literacy levels and even language barriers.
Another benefit of adopting simple to interpret images is that for competing media outlets, no
longer tied to traditional newspaper, radio and television formats, it can increase their
audience by publishing data visualizations for various topics which attracts more viewers.
Havelock writes of a similar trend when classical period authors tried to rebundle their
content for interpretation for various audiences: “The writers of the classical period consulted

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each other's works and wrote what they had to say out of what others had written before them
to a degree difficult for a modern author to appreciate” (Crowley & Heyer., p.59).
Visualizing Communication
For many of us in North America, whether we like it or not, we have allowed our
electronic devices to become an extension of ourselves, telling us when to wake up, keeping
us connected to our community and managing our busy lives. This is a reflection of how we
as a society also have become addicted to current events and entertaining tidbits that are
quick to share and easily understandable. And through it all, speed is everything. As Google’s
head of news Richard Gingras told Wired Magazine: “Anything less than instant simply
shows a degradation and decline in engagement” (Lapowski, I., 2015). This statement
indicates how the modern consumer has high expectations for the speed of production and
absorption of writing and ideas. Before medieval times, the alphabet was not widely adopted
because monks could only work so quickly scribing out beautiful texts that had intricate
details and colour. Literacy was centralized through religious institutions passing on
information. When Gutenberg first created the printing press, literacy spread around the globe
because of the speed and the mechanization of writing. Up until the dawn of the internet,
infographics had not been widely adopted or created because of the time required to create
them. What’s happened in recent years is that people have the tools like InDesign and
Photoshop which allow these visual representations of data to be created in minutes. We are
both producing and consuming at a faster rate than ever before.
As concluded by Manual Castells in The Rise of the Network Society, we are living in
a predominantly social word and infographics are part of the defining element of our human
experience: “Information is the key ingredient of our social organization and [it is] why flows
of messages and images between networks constitute the basic thread of our social structure,”
(Castells, 2010, p. 508).
A Global Audience
Infographics have been shared in prehistoric caves many years ago as a form of
rudimentary communication, but what’s changing is they are now being created and
distributed more quickly, as well as used more extensively to help people consume
information faster and more easily through extensive research. As Walter Ong describes in
Orality, Literacy and Modern Media, we are are now in an age of secondary orality, in which
communications generate “a sense for groups immeasurably larger than those of primarily
oral culture” (Crowley & Heyer., p.69). In primary orality, prominent people in the
community needed the power of storytelling to paint a picture to break down complex ideas

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with mnemonic rhythms and patterns (Crowley & Heyer., p.68) so they would be stored as a
memory. Ong describes the difficulty in imagining a culture where there was no text,
(Crowley & Heyer., p.64) and a similar question could be posed today in asking what text
would be like without pictures when presented online. As text gives a visual presence to
words, images which enhance text are becoming more important in understanding complex
ideas. Infographics advance primary and secondary orality and are created for a global
audience. In Ong’s exploration, he declares sight, unlike sound, can allow an audience to
“dissect” (Crowley & Heyer., p.68) by looking at something from “one direction at a time.”
Because a modern news reader (who uses a smartphone, laptop or tablet) is inundated with
information and updates throughout the day, the practice of pairing complex text with a
graphical representation allows the audience to take in the ideas in a slower, less immersive
way which leads to more comprehension. On space-based medium like online platforms, in
newspapers and on television screens, infographics help decipher statistics and large pieces of
information.
Data Journalism and Visualization
With this context of interpreting complex information, the image is a useful and
popular tool across the internet for journalists. Computer-assisted reporting has been
developing parallel to the growth of computers and has traditionally meant various
journalistic research used computer technology like databases, archives and online searches
(Yarnall, et. al, 2008). As computational power and computer literacy have developed, so too
has the way journalists have found sophisticated ways of analyzing and presenting data by
using computational “processes such as searching, correlating, filtering, identifying patterns,
and so on,” (Flew, Spurgeon, Daniel, & Swift, 2012, p.158). Journalists are using computers
both to find and analyze data, acting as statisticians and computer programmers, but many are
also applying the power of the computer to put those findings into meaningful images. Data
visualizations, rich graphics and images explaining complex concepts in news can help both
journalists and readers “cut through dense information in an efficient way,” (Flew, et.al 2012,
p.166). The modern journalist has many tools available to create rich data visualizations:
from easy-to-use programs like Google Maps to more complex visualizations created in
house by teams of programmers and journalists at newspapers like the New York Times,
(Royal, 2010), the image is once again becoming an important part of making sense of
current events.

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Real World Applications of Infographics and Data Visualization
As news production has moved online, more content has become image-based, as
opposed to text only, partly because the image rules the internet today (Benitez, J., 2009). As
the visualization of information is becoming more sophisticated and popular, it remains an
expensive and time-intensive pursuit available to journalists with a unique skill set. While
enhanced graphics and data analysis tools are being developed, making large data sets and
trends easier for an audience to understand, there remain limitations to both the practicality
and usefulness of data visualizations for both journalists their audience.
Newsroom resources
Not all newsrooms have the financial means or staff with the technical ability to
execute stories with a data visualization aspect. Financially, creating a visual image which
explains complex data is much more time and labour intensive than creating text that could
explain the same thing. Both the time to gather the information and the time to analyze it, in
addition to the time to create an image can be much more expensive for a news operation, and
in all but the biggest news organizations, there is not the extra money to make data
visualization common practice (Fink, & Anderson, 2015). Further, the number of journalists
with both journalism skills, data analysis skills and programming skills is small, so in most
cases robust data interactivity and visualization is developed in a team environment made up
of programmers, journalists and statisticians, teams which are out of reach for many
newsrooms (Fink, & Anderson, 2015).
Education
The Las Vegas Sun editors presented a chart at the 2008 Online News Association
conference which showed 22 tools it used to design for interactivity on the news site (Royal,
2010) further illustrating the steep technology learning curve facing journalists in adding
technology tools to their journalism skills. In their 2008 paper, How Post-secondary
Journalism Educators Teach Advanced CAR Data Analysis Skills in the Digital Age, Louise
Yarnall, et. al found that only half of the 232 journalism educators in 33 countries surveyed
were teaching spreadsheet and database software skills. A similar picture can be seen today in
Canada: of the 11 University-level journalism programs across the country (see Appendix A)
while all teach some sort of multimedia storytelling skills, only five of the 11 programs teach
data analysis, coding and/or data visualization. Instead, most journalism programs teach skills
in radio, television, writing or multi-media for broadcasting through the use of digital
technology, rather than analysis. The skill set to program data analysis, graphic design or

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interactive data visualization in journalists remains elusive, and mostly self-taught (Royal,
2010).
Style and substance
Because data visualization tools rely heavily on both the graphic capabilities of the
software and the user’s skills, in addition to what data is available, there can be technical
limitations to what can be shown, and the risk of the audience not understanding a data set
remain just like traditional journalism. In the example below, (Keller, 2013) it is not readily
apparent what the image is showing and it is labour intensive for the audience to check each
to see what each dot represents.
s.
SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/05/07/education/college-admissions-
gap.html?_r=0
Another criticism of data visualization and infographics in journalism is the question
remains, is the image newsworthy? In the example below, (Irwin, 2015) an interactive
calculator comparing buying vs. renting has been updated on the New York Times website for
several years, but is this tool journalistic in nature, when the same kind of analysis could be
seen on a bank or financial planning website? In the evolution of data visualization

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presentation, this iteration was created by Mike Bostock, Shan Carter and Archie Tse all
graphics editors, which can be seen in this example as there is a clear link to the
accompanying article, an explanation of the methodology and interactivity that allows the
audience to select their individual circumstances.
SOURCE:http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-calculator.html
Information access
As the name would suggest, data visualization works best when there is a multitude of
reliable data to work with. Data like this is most likely to be available through requests for
public information and documents, or through compiling information that already exists in
other news stories. Many data visualization projects are created from information that is
already accessible to the public (though it may be costly or time sensitive to get). Private
data is less accessible and so is harder and more expensive to get (Fink & Anderson, 2015),
meaning that investigative projects needing private data may take more time to turn into a
data visualization. Further, some public agencies provide journalists information in data sets
that are easy to manipulate into data visualizations, which leads to an important journalistic
consideration in content creation: when is it journalism and when is it public relations? Take
the following graphic, one snapshot of several charts, from the Wall Street Journal, (DeBold

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& Friedman, 2015) which illustrates the decline of infectious diseases as vaccines are
introduced. The webpage contains no accompanying article, nor a link to one, and all the data
comes from the US Centres for Disease Control, which has a mandate to control infectious
diseases.
SOURCE: http://graphics.wsj.com/infectious-diseases-and-vaccines/
Without any accompanying analysis, it is difficult to know if this should be considered
journalistic data visualization, or would be better as data visualization living on the web site
of the CDC.
Conclusion
Throughout history, the use of images has helped cultures break down barriers where
literacy and comprehension have been an issue. From cave paintings to cathedrals, images
have helped large audiences benefit from a greater understanding of culture and community.
In a similar way, technology has helped the modern world evolve into a visually-fixated
society. More recently, it has been the invention of the printing press and the Internet which
has helped publications reach a wider audience, while it has been newsrooms adopting
infographic-friendly software allowing journalists to process large sets of data into easily
understandable visualizations, breaking break down the world’s most complex stories.

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Literacy rates are higher than ever, but visual literacy remains king as consumers of
the news look to become informed of world events faster than ever. We have come to a point
in time in this information age where we are living in a predominantly social world and
infographics are part of the defining element of our human experience (Castells, 2010, p.
508). Throughout this paper we have shown that infographics appeal to those consuming the
news, and can be a benefit to those marginalized by poor literacy and language skills.
Infographic comprehension is one thing, but having the skillset to create infographics that
matter to audiences is the next hurdle. While infographic comprehension is increasing,
equipping journalists with the right skillset remains a challenge in newsrooms around the
world which must be addressed. If journalists want to continue to lead in communication
benefiting society and democracy, they should embrace digital literacy because, as Clay
Shirky writes in his book Here Comes Everybody, “When we change the way we
communicate, we change society.”

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References
Abundis, J. (2011, March 14). More Boston Globe infographics about Japan, nuclear
plants. [Web log]. Retrieved from: http://patrickgarvin.com/blog/?p=940.
Benitez, J. (2009). Visual Language and Communication in an Emerging Global
Civilization: The Ascendance of the Image. International Journal Of The Humanities, 6 (12),
111-116.
Canadian Health Global Network. (2014) Ebola is Real, together we can stop the
spread. CHGN.org. Retrieved from: http://www.chgn.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/11/Liberia-MoH-poster-signs-and-symptoms.jpg
DeBold, T. and Friedman, D. (2015, February 11). Battling Infectious Diseases in the
20th Century: The Impact of Vaccines. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from:
http://graphics.wsj.com/infectious-diseases-and-vaccines/
Erard, M. (2012, January 14). Are We Really Monolingual. The New York Times, pp.
SR12. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/are-we-really-
monolingual.html?_r=0
Fink, K., & Anderson, C. W. (2015). Data Journalism in the United States.
Journalism Studies, 16(4), 467-481. doi:10.1080/1461670X.2014.939852
Flew, T., Spurgeon, C., Daniel, A., & Swift, A. (2012). The Promise Of
Computational Journalism. Journalism Practice, 6(2), 157.
doi:10.1080/17512786.2011.616655
Havelock, E. (n.d.). (1982) The Greek Legacy. In D. J. Crowley & P. Heyer (Eds.),
Communication in history : technology, culture, society. Boston: Pearson Allyn and Bacon,
c2007.
Hoetzlein, Rama. (2011, April 8). Visual Communication in Times of Crisis: The
Fukushima Nuclear Accident. Leonardo. Vol. 45, No. 2, pp. 113–118. Retrieved from:
Innis, H. (1950). The bias of communication. n D. J. Crowley & P. Heyer (Eds.),
Communication in history : technology, culture, society. Boston: Pearson Allyn and Bacon,
c2007.
Irwin, N. (2015, June 17). After an Era of Ups and Downs, Home Prices Return to
Sanity. The New York Times. Retrieved from:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/18/upshot/after-an-era-of-ups-and-downs-home-prices-
return-to-sanity.html.
Kibar, Pinar Nugolu. (Oct. 20, 2014) A new approach to equip students with visual
literacy skills: Use of infographics in education. European Conference on Information

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Literacy. Retrieved from: http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-14136-
7_48#page-1
Keller, J. (2013, May 7). At Top Colleges, an Admissions Gap for Minorities. The
New York Times. Retrieved from:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/05/07/education/college-admissions-gap.html?_r=0
Lapowski, I. (2015, October 7). Google’s Got a Plan to Make the Mobile Web Less
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mobile-web-less-slow/
Mick, Jason. (2011, March 17). EDITORIAL: CNN's Colorful Account of Tokyo
Radiation "Danger" is Inaccurate. Daily Tech. Retrieved from:
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Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 63(2), 146-164. DOI:
10.1177/107769580806300204

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Appendix A: Data Journalism Course Offerings at Canadian Universities
A survey of 11 university-level journalism programs in Canada was done by reading the
course catalogs on their websites. Only five of the 11 surveyed offer courses in data
visualization, programming language, graphics, or data visualization (noted as “journalism
data courses.”)
Carleton University offers a data journalism elective at the graduate level.
Concordia University offers a Bachelor degree in Journalism with no journalism data courses.
King's University offers a Master's of Data and Investigative Journalism degree, but no
journalism data courses are not offered at the undergraduate level.
Kwantlen Polytechnic University offers a data visualization course and coding classes.
Ryerson University offers data journalism and visualization courses for both graduate and
undergraduate students.
St. Thomas University offers no journalism data courses.
Thompson Rivers University offers no journalism data courses.
University of British Columbia, Masters of Journalism offers no journalism data courses.
Universite du Quebec a Montreal offers no journalism data courses.
University of Regina, Masters and Bachelors, offer no journalism data courses.
University of Western Ontario integrates programming code and graphics into the graduate
program.