King's College London

TY - JOUR

T1 - Narrating Networks

T2 - Exploring the affordances of networks as storytelling devices in journalism

AU - Bounegru, Liliana

AU - Venturini, Tommaso

AU - Gray, Jonathan

AU - Jacomy, Mathieu

PY - 2017/7/3

Y1 - 2017/7/3

N2 - Networks have become the de facto diagram of the Big Data age (try searching Google Images for [big data AND visualisation] and see). The concept of networks has become central to many fields of human inquiry and is said to revolutionise everything from medicine to markets to military intelligence. While the mathematical and analytical capabilities of networks have been extensively studied over the years, in this article we argue that the storytelling affordances of networks have been comparatively neglected. In order to address this we use multimodal analysis to examine the stories that networks evoke in a series of journalism articles. We develop a protocol by means of which narrative meanings can be construed from network imagery and the context in which it is embedded, and discuss five different kinds of narrative readings of networks, illustrated with analyses of examples from journalism. Finally, to support further research in this area, we discuss methodological issues that we encountered and suggest directions for future study to advance and broaden research around this defining aspect of visual culture after the digital turn.

AB - Networks have become the de facto diagram of the Big Data age (try searching Google Images for [big data AND visualisation] and see). The concept of networks has become central to many fields of human inquiry and is said to revolutionise everything from medicine to markets to military intelligence. While the mathematical and analytical capabilities of networks have been extensively studied over the years, in this article we argue that the storytelling affordances of networks have been comparatively neglected. In order to address this we use multimodal analysis to examine the stories that networks evoke in a series of journalism articles. We develop a protocol by means of which narrative meanings can be construed from network imagery and the context in which it is embedded, and discuss five different kinds of narrative readings of networks, illustrated with analyses of examples from journalism. Finally, to support further research in this area, we discuss methodological issues that we encountered and suggest directions for future study to advance and broaden research around this defining aspect of visual culture after the digital turn.

KW - data journalism

KW - digital journalism

KW - multimodal analysis

KW - narratives

KW - network analysis

KW - network visualisation

KW - networks

KW - storytelling

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84975263630&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/21670811.2016.1186497

DO - 10.1080/21670811.2016.1186497

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:84975263630

VL - 5

SP - 699

EP - 730

JO - Digital Journalism

JF - Digital Journalism

SN - 2167-0811

IS - 6

ER -