Hi, I’m James

I’m D&DSL at 360info @ Monash Uni

Climate stories

With, and around, data

JAMES GOLDIE

Data and Digital Storytelling Lead, 360info

Today

1. Why should I tell stories?
2. Prime considerations for comms
3. Handling jargon in climate stories
4. Conclusions

Slides

https://ssa2022.talks.jamesgoldie.dev

(Code for these slides is at https://github.com/jimjam-slam/talk-ssa-2022)

Slides aren’t currently up (but will be later today)

Hi!

I used to be a climate + health researcher

•

Worked with CLEX and MCCCRH on climate change communication

•

Now I’m a data journalist with

360info is an open access global information agency that tackles the world’s biggest challenges and offers practical solutions.

Open data @ github.com/360-info

I’ve been working at 360info for about a year

We’re a research-driven newswire, and we give everything away for free under Creative Commons so that all journalists can benefit from it

Part of my role is creating our visuals. (click)

That means I do everything: coding, design and analysis.

As our team grows, I’m also working with our infrastructure partners and looking for ways to make it easier for reporters and editors to use our charts

Why should I tell stories?

Scientists are trusted

Sources of climate change news you trust (n = 2038)

Barchart showing various sources of information on the Y-axis and the fraction of surveyed people who trust them to deliver climate change information on the X-axis.

Park et al. (2022, p. 18)

Researchers are really trusted - much more so than other figures - in many fields.

This survey looked at who people trust for news about climate change. The standout source is researchers and scientists, trusted by half the audience.

The chart challenge

"Interpretation of graphical representations requires a relatively advanced skill set, and may therefore serve to distance some potential audiences.

“Furthermore, [charts and graphs] lack the perceived realism of photographic images, potentially rendering them less memorable and less likely to be perceived as “truth.”

Rebich-Hespanha (2014), investigating the use of visuals in the media

NOTES

But charts can break through

Climate Stripes by Ed Hawkins

This is an extreme example of Tufte’s data-to-ink ideas

I’m not saying all charts should be like the climate stripes

But this chart serves a specific purpose really well

Climate Stripes by Ed Hawkins (showyourstripes.info)

• Stripes
• Stripes with labels
• Bars
• Bars with labels

Climate stripes in their original form

Climate stripes with X axis labels

Climate stripes as a barchart

Climate stripes as a labelled barchart

The original climate stripes were designed specifically for public consumption - to start conversations about climate change.

But as its popularity has grown, the uses of it have changed

The website offers variations with more complexity

As researchers, you have the opportunity to build social consensus for a policy action, for change or to just help people understand

(It’ll help you talk to your colleagues, too!)

You can use visuals and stories to many ends - to change policies, to change behaviours, or just to help people understand the world.

Or to better talk to each other!

Prime considerations

So let’s talk about what you can do to make your stories heard

The most important considerations aren’t just for climate change stories, or even just for data-driven visuals

This is general communication advice!

Who’s your audience?

The public?

Audience at a university event?

Funders?

Peers/colleagues?

What kind of training do they have?

What are they interested in?

How much time do they have?

NOTES

What’s your purpose?

Helping people evaluate a policy?

Changing individual behaviours?

Convincing your colleagues to change their analyses?

Convincing funders to 💰?

Advising people in an an emergency?*

* do not do this without specific training!

This is your why. Why are you doing this?

What’s the point?

Point ≠ purpose: it’s the point for the reader

Avoid a “so what?” moment

My colleagues in journalism call this different things

The “Hey Martha”

The marmalade drop

The purpose is about what you want out of communicating;

The point is about finding something that will catch your audience’s attention

In newsrooms, editors are trained to make sure this moment hits in the opening paragraph or two

Readers shouldn’t be shrugging and saying “so what?”

This is really hard to evaluate when we’re talking about our own work!

There is lots of work that is useful and important but that doesn’t have an immediate angle.

Sometimes we need to get creative!

What does that mean for a visual?

Jane Bunn presenting climate change messaging on 7news

• Audience: the public?
• Audience: evening news audience
• Time: about 7 seconds
• Our purpose: present evidence of climate change
• Our point: summer days warming up near you

Here’s an example of a time series from my last job, running during the weather segment in the evening news.

In this case, the graphics team took the graphic we supplied and remade it.

First question: who’s our audience? We could just say the public, but let’s be more specific and say that it’s people watching the evening news.

That tells us a few more things: they don’t have much time. About 7 seconds, and they might be multi-tasking.

Our purpose here was to present evidence of climate change.

But that’s not the point.

The point is that things are warming up close to home.

What does that mean for a visual?

Jane Bunn presenting climate change messaging on 7news

Primary messages

• Trend line up
• Getting warmer

Secondary messages

• Year-to-year variability
• Length of data record

There’re a lot of potential messages in this chart.

But the first things people see emphasise our point.

Everything else is secondary. If we’re lucky, astute viewers might understand that the climate varies from year to year, or that we have a long, authoritative record here.

These graphics were designed to be repeated each month; maybe people will pick these messages up with repeated views.

But the primary message is designed to be understood even if someone reads the headline and misses the chart.

Or if they just see the rising trend line and the orange background but miss everything else.

In a broadcast TV graphic, the point is basically the whole thing!

This piece on the right is a longform scrollytelling piece.

You might be tempted to think that you have more time here

But the point is still important! People can and do close out of articles if the message doesn’t land

Scrollytelling pieces often build a complex visual up piece-by-piece. That’s important to help the reader understand.

But that doesn’t mean they start the story with the meaning of chart axes or colours.

The point emotionally invests viewers. Then you can add context to the point and explain the need to go complex.

Then you can build a visual up.

Display time:

7-10 seconds

Reading time:

11 minutes (excluding graphics)

Jargon in climate stories

Jargon is a topic that everyone knows they need to work on

I’m gonna cover it anyway!

Talking to different audiences is like switching from writing a blog post to writing a manuscript

It’s really easy to assume that you already know how to do it

Relating climate to weather

Jargon

daily maxima

maximum daily maximum

area-averaged temperature

(Possible) alternative

daytime temperatures

hottest day

temperature across Australia

“Climate is what we expect; weather is what we get”

A good chunk of physical climate is the patterns we see across time and the three dimensions of space

That means we have a lot of jargon for talking about spatial and temporal scales

This is a tricky dance: in some cases we can get away with an apparent loss of precision in our words, because of the context.

“Daytime temp” != “Maximum temperature”, but audiences have been trained to relate the two. (So long as the difference isn’t important to this application!)

The other interesting thing is that people’s intuition starts to drift - not just with complexity in the measure, but with the time and especially space scales

When we talk about daily temperature in a city, people link it to their experience

If we talk about a hot day across Australia, that’s a little harder to grasp!

Once you get to the point of a country or the globe having a hot or cold year, it starts to be more of an intellectual exercise

Trickier jargon

eg. extreme rainfall

Num. days ≥ fixed threshold

Num. days ≥ historical quantile

% total rain falling on those days

Rainiest 3-day stretch

Rainiest 5-day stretch

etc.

This trade-off becomes more difficult as our statistics start to become indices.

There are many ways to characterise extreme rainfall:

The difference between these may not be important for your audience - it might be enough to say “there are more wet days” or “we’re seeing more extreme rainfall”

But if our conclusion is sensitive to the choice of index, we could have a communication problem

The solution then might not be “use a very long compound noun or an acronym”; it may be “this story is more complex than we thought”.

We need to ask ourselves about our purpose and our point again.

Conclusions

Your expertise is trusted

Think about audience, purpose and point

Reduce jargon…
but keep your aims in mind

NOTES

Thanks for listening!

Questions?

360info_global

360info.org

github.com/360-info