Deconstructing Global Media Coverage

Russia-Ukraine War

An interactive Data Visualization built leveraging D3

Skills

Role

  • Project Manager

Highlights

  • Data Visualization

  • Project Management

  • Agile Workflow

  • User Testing

Technology

  • Nominated for best project in course

  • Granted distinction

  • D3.js

  • Javascript

  • HTML/CSS

  • Bootstraps

  • Github

  • Tableau

Overview

This interactive data-viz website was created as a final assignment for a Data Visualization course at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The project sought to explore interactive visualization methods and storytelling through the analysis of news media coverage on the Russia-Ukraine War.

Process Flowchart

Data Analysis

GDELT API

The project began with the GDELT Database API.The GDELT Project monitors the world's broadcast, print, and web news from nearly every corner of every country in over 100 languages. This was an extremely large data set and we had to be strategic in how we parsed and pulled information from it.

Persuasive Storytelling

Our team sought inspiration from other infographic sources to craft a visual identity and tone for our project. We aimed to strike a balance that highlighted the seriousness of the topic while still feeling light enough to encourage exploration.

After collecting data and finding interesting topic areas, we began piecing together a narrative. This required team discussions, creativity, and lots of white-boarding. We used story telling structure to organize the layout/order of our interactive visualizations.

Visual Identity

We iterated through numerous visualizations. We then merged our ideas and concepts in collaborative sessions. Making sure everyone was engaged and felt represented in the creative process was a highlight of the project for me.

We leveraged tableau to conduct quick cursory explorations of the data set, finding areas of interest.This investigative effort was key to understanding media coverage. In this stage we pulled out trends and patterns in the data that were interesting to explore.

Tableau

In order to refine our work, we conducted numerous think-aloud studies with a diverse set of users. This helped us to observe how people interacted with our interface and craft a better narrative, more expressive visualizations, and clearer messaging.

User Testing

The tools for the job

This project relied on D3.js to create novel interactive visualizations. Mastering D3 was a core part of my learning on this project. In addition to D3, we also used a variety of other tools to help us successfully code and deliver this data experience.