Data visualization is rapidly establishing itself as a central pillar driving the core narrative of news, moving beyond its role as a mere supplement to text. As readers' "reading habits" shift in the online environment, newsrooms are deepening their focus not only on "what to say" but also on "how to show it."
At the Information+ Conference 2025, held last November at MIT and Northeastern University in Boston, active discussions centered on viewing data visualization not as a technical output but as a "social language" and a "core medium of journalism."
Info+ is an international event held every two years in a new city, bringing together researchers, newspaper graphics reporters, and designers in the fields of data visualization and information design.
The host city, Boston, is one of the U.S. cities where academic and practical work are most closely intertwined. Research institutions, journalism schools, and policy research centers are clustered around Harvard, MIT, and Northeastern University. As a result, academic discourse naturally flows into field technology, while practical concerns are translated back into research. As one of the most historic cities, the traces of history scattered throughout Boston demonstrate that the entire city serves as a vast "data repository."
What to Show: A 'Social Language' That Records Narratives
On the first day of the conference, a workshop titled "Let's Play with Data!" led by Jose Duarte, director of Easydataviz, was held at the MIT Media Lab. Participants stepped outside the classroom to engage with people and collect data firsthand.
The data was visualized on the spot using analog tools such as paper, pens, and stickers. Director Duarte emphasized that "what matters more than a polished visual is the process and context." Data, he noted, is a cohesive body of fragmented information and a record containing situations and experiences that conveys a clear message.
This discourse continued in the academic presentations held on the Northeastern University campus. MIT professor Sarah Williams introduced a project addressing the costs borne by Latin American migrants crossing borders. By weaving actual banknotes together with migrants to create a large tapestry, she visually represented the enormous $2.2 billion in migration costs. The idea was inspired by the lives of migrants who endured currency collapse by carrying bags of cash. Professor Williams said, "Data that reflects lives of hardship ultimately created a powerful resonance and made a decisive contribution to the Biden administration's legislation expanding legal migration pathways."
The case presented by Liuhuaying Yang, a researcher at the Complexity Science Hub Vienna (CSH) in Austria, also drew attention. Yang collected the names of Chinese American women to illuminate how individual identities have been lost amid the vast currents of immigration and assimilation. The visualization was created together with Melinda Sipos, a data artist and installation artist who transforms data into tangible art. Data visualization thus functioned as a multidimensional record and critical device for conveying the narratives of marginalized groups.
Korean researchers also made their presence known by presenting data-based social practices.
Professor Kim Mi-hyun of Texas State University brought public attention to salary inequality among university faculty and the structural wage imbalances faced by specific groups in the "Critical Data Visualization" session. The project garnered attention for driving tangible institutional change, such as actual salary increases. In particular, by combining numerical data with personal narratives of university members, it demonstrated how data can become a powerful tool for eliciting empathy and achieving social justice, going beyond simple indicators. Educators from various university institutions attended the session, and the response was fervent. Professor Kim also called on participants to "raise our voices together for change."
Professor Ahn Chae-won of the National University of Singapore, who presented in the latter half, addressed the redevelopment issue of Sewoon Sangga in Seoul under the theme of "data resistance." Using a data visualization approach, she recorded the traces of places being erased in the development process. She suggested that "multifaceted data practices," such as digital twins that replicate physical spaces in virtual environments, can serve as practical alternatives offering a vision that counters the government's one-size-fits-all redevelopment approach.
How to Show It: "Small Is Big"
Heated presentations traversing the boundaries between practice and academia continued until the final day of the conference, but the clear highlight was the session featuring newsroom practitioners. Participant engagement reached its peak when graphics reporters from The New York Times (NYT) and the Financial Times (FT) revealed the intense production processes behind their newsroom work. Accustomed to daily time and physical constraints, they unanimously agreed: "Visuals must be the purest interface that helps readers understand."
Kennedy Elliott, a reporter on the NYT's Visual News team, cited coverage tracking the establishment of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the large-scale cuts to federal employees during the Trump administration. "At the time, executive orders were pouring out and government websites and data information were severely lacking, so reporters had no choice but to rely on existing official data for coverage," she recalled. "In the process of classifying layoff data by type and cross-verifying with other outlets, we inevitably had to build our own dataset," she said, sharing the difficulties of the time.
The strategy chosen by the NYT visualization team was not flashy interactives or large-scale graphics. They determined that quickly digestible small charts, lists, and simple-structured graphics were more appropriate. Elliott emphasized that "the smallest is sometimes the biggest (small is big)." In the chaos of information overload, clear and simple visuals become the most powerful tool. She made clear that data visualization is a core element of journalism that serves as a "directional guide" for readers, going beyond a technique for explaining information.
"My 6-year-old daughter doesn't know the word 'lion,' but the moment she sees a picture of a lion in a picture book, she instinctively recognizes what it is."
Elliott explained the importance of "intuition" by citing an anecdote about her daughter. "Visual media must be a much faster and more primal language than text," she said.
Concluding her session, Elliott added, "A single well-made graphic is more powerful than 4,000 words," and "the small graphics we create come together to form a historic process of building humanity's 'visual literacy.'" Data visualization, in this sense, is one of the ways humanity understands the world—a noble endeavor of writing page by page a "historical lexicon of graphics."
*This article was produced with support from the Korea Press Foundation.
