The Infinite Narrative: Systematic Storytelling for Complex Information
By: Gerlinde Schuller
Tags: Storytelling, Information Design, Systems Design, Systems And Complexity, Journalism

We are in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and therefore at the centre of a media narrative characterised by unprecedented complexity and dynamism. How can information design assist in effectively communicating this explosion of news and data?

Informing and entertaining

Tell me a story and I’ll tell you who you are. The substance of our stories and the way we narrate them allows drawing conclusions in regard to our personality and worldview. Storytelling is part of our nature and thus the oldest form of human information exchange. At first, it was limited to oral lore, which kept what was related short and clear. These stories were a mixture of factual claims and the believed truth. The aim was to simultaneously inform and entertain — providing facts and offering amusement at the same time. Only those who mastered the art of capturing emotion with their voices, facial expressions, and gestures captured the attention of the listeners. The truthfulness of the content was not decisive.

Separating truth and lies

With the Acta Diurna (Lat. for ‘daily acts’) chiseled in stone, Julius Caesar in 59 BC introduced a publicly displayed news bulletin, thus establishing the separation between truth and lies when imparting information. Journalism was born. His objective — to provide the public with current, true, and relevant news and stories — hasn’t changed until this day. The press is considered the Fourth Estate, a demand met foremost by investigative journalists who, with a watchdog mentality, control government bodies and corporations. In the course of the past millennia, journalism has always made use of the newest technological achievements, such as letterpress printing, telegraphy, radio, television, internet, and smartphones. Over time, this enabled increasing the speed of communicating information and maximising the geographic coverage. News, that in former times could only be read analogously and locally, can today be retrieved digitally and globally on the internet. Thanks to professional translation programmes, most news can even be ‘understood’ by an international readership.

Communicating complex stories

In the past decades, the transformation of journalism has accelerated even more. The amounts of data from which journalistic research draws have increased exponentially thanks to expanding digitisation and the Open Source movement. Through citizen journalism, news channels have become more diverse. Social media platforms have established interactivity and contributed to the rapid increase in the speed at which news is communicated to the public.

Social networks have asserted themselves as political information sources but also proven that they peddle misinformation by blurring the separation between truth and lies. Other technologies contribute to this as well — social bots spread fake news and the personalisation of websites and the results of search engine queries promote the creation of filter bubbles. The information media react to these trends by boosting investigative journalism, data, and long-form journalism, as well as the collaboration with whistleblowers.

How the news was shared in seven Western countries that have been

particularly impacted by the coronavirus.

Individual countries each shared coronavirus news based on domestic spread.

Chart: Echobox

The COVID-19 pandemic is now putting media reporting to the test again. After global media events such as 9/11, the NSA surveillance affair, and the global financial crisis, the question regarding faster and more efficient ‘enlightenment’ is further intensified. Alongside information, classification, and orientation, ‘certainty’ is demanded from the mass media in the current crisis because the topicality and truth content of the information may even influence life and death decisions. What is more, the pandemic affects each and every one of us and almost all areas of life. Events have been piling up over the past months, each day brings new data and scientific findings are changing in record time. The end is not in sight. The story that must be told is characterised by unprecedented complexity and dynamism. There is a high probability that the reports written by journalists will be made obsolete by the unfolding events.

A response in real-time is, of course, not possible because journalists must first evaluate and judge data and political decisions before publishing them. Yet even quality journalism has been forced to shorten its response time, for people’s interest in world affairs has increased with lightning speed. The readership demands at once quicker access to the newest information, a structured overview, long-term documentation, and more transparency. The current narrative and display formats of media platforms are, however, not geared to such a high degree of complexity. New and more efficient presentation formats are required for adequate reporting.

Synthesis of system design and storytelling

In a 1956 study, the American psychologist George A. Miller found out that humans can accurately store an average of seven information units plus or minus 2 in short-term memory. Our brain can therefore grasp complexity only when it is broken down into small, easily understandable units.

Miller’s Universal Law: remembering 7 +/-2 chunks. Graphic: The World as Flatland

In order to maintain an overview and control over complicated relations, we have ordered the world systematically. Ancient high cultures already began collecting economic documents in the form of clay tablets and classified these archives according to origin and contexts of creation. Today, classifications exist for knowledge, commodities, languages, soils, clouds, and many other things.

Determining international standards is also an approach taken to come to grips with complexity. The standardisation of products after the Second World War proved to be an important aspect of the functioning of an international economic and cultural system that brought forth the preconditions for globalisation.

In investigative journalism, comprehensive research is published in so-called ‘dossiers’. The term derives from advocacy and designates a bundle of files having to do with a legal case. These collections of correspondences and documents are ordered chronologically to give a quick overview. The main character in this ‘narrating archive’ is the defendant, the storyline is his or her case. The systematisation makes the expansive story more manageable and accessible.

How can a complex story be effectively communicated? This is the opening question of my research project The Infinite Narrative in which I examine to what extent a synthesis of system design and storytelling can facilitate and enrich the communication of complicated, multi-layered contents. To this end, I will further develop and lay down a method I have experimented with in earlier projects. I have named this information design method Systematic Storytelling. It is predestined for communicating complex stories such as those conveyed by (investigative) journalists and scientists.