Data Storytelling Techniques: Near/Far Reporting

Near/Far reporting is a technique that allows one to explore both the intimate and the broader story of our data. It involves moving between a micro view of the data and the macro view of the data to create a relevant and holistic story that has the power to both engage and educate.

As the above graphic suggests, the near view allows us to 'zoom in' and see how our data affects us as an individual.

Whereas the far view allows us to 'zoom out' and see how our data affects everyone else, providing context and perspective to the near view, as well as the larger social and financial implications of our story.

With careful consideration to the ordering and interaction between the two levels of narrative, near/far reporting can be a powerful technique within data storytelling.

Data statistics on the current Covid-19 pandemic are a great example of near/far data reporting in practice.

As an individual I want to know the latest statistics in my area and how they might affect me and my family. 'Selfishly' this is what I need to know, as it is going to have an immediate impact on my everyday life and potentially my health. This is known as the 'near view' - how the data affects me as an individual. From the UK government Covid-19 statistics website I am able to view a map of the UK and search directly for my postcode so I can see the current number of cases reported in my local geographic region:

Number of positive Covid-19 cases for Winchester-West - Gov.uk

But I also want to know the wider context, and how the virus is being managed and reported on nationwide. I have questions about how are cases growing or declining, are we doing more tests, are deaths on the increase etc. The same website allows me to do this to see these 'zoomed-out' macro trends:

UK-wide statistics on Covid-19 - Gov.uk

Being able to switch between these two views (the near and the far) gives me that personal and holistic view that demonstrates the full data story.

Here we have looked at interactive storytelling - the data is provisioned to me on a website where I am free to move around and view what interests me and search for the data that is relevant to me.

But it's not just in interactive dashboard style storytelling where near/far reporting can be applied. In more traditional data journalism, this technique has been used for years where a larger narrative article might be headed by an anecdotal story or quote about an individual, before then reaching back up to the story at large.

Or in a PowerPoint style insight presentation, we have the opportunity to talk about a particular user experience and how it might be going wrong for one customer in detail (so we create empathy and understanding on a more human level), and then we rise up and see for how many customers it is going wrong for, to help understand the financial implications of this poor experience.

Or we might talk about macro trends in the marketplace and how they might be affecting customer behaviour, before then 'zooming in' to talk about how this might affect our business and our growth plans.

There are lots of opportunities to be creative with this technique and it is a great way of telling more effective, personal and broad stories with our data. Because remember, data and statistics can only take us so far in creating engaging and emotional data stories - we need to find the small and human stories as well, as this is where the power of data storytelling really takes off.