Journalism visualization devices: six visual modes of seeing

Hugo Plazas / Colombia

University of Narino

Paper

http://www.udenar.edu.co

The growing number of visualization devices in the online journalism world draws attention to the mechanisms both technical and symbolic that build the relationship between the producer and the user in the interaction with the device. This relation has been studied in different approaches and empirical research; some of them related to the visual studies field. This paper aims to contribute to the study of the visual aspects of this relationship through the analysis of the implicit representation of the user that the producer depicts into the device. This symbolic approach tends to find the guidance operation for interaction as a prescriptive model of information consumption focused in the visual representation.

This paper proposes six-visual modes for this guidance operation as the established models in the current online journalism: (1) visualization of events, (2) visualization of hidden issues, (3) visualization of spaces, (4) visualization of narratives, (5) visualization of the subject involved with data and (6) visualization of convergences. These six modes are defined and their characteristics explained.