A narrative view to an historical event through data
By: Jonathan Touriño Jacobo
Tags: Data Journalism, History, Infographics

Reuters is a well renowned news agency, based in London, covering the daily events all around the world, be it by text, image or video. They also have a graphics department where you can find data journalism content, or infographics news that helps have a better perspective on a given event, such as the recent explosion in Beirut in How powerful was the Beirut blast? for example. The one I decided to analyse revolves around the 75th anniversary of Hiroshima’s bombing: In a flash, a changed world.

Mode, genre and audience

The article can be classified has being multimodal, given it has both visual and textual components. In the visual side, they mostly used infographics and maps, with some archive footage and satellite images and even a short archive video. All of it accompanied with text that mainly narrates the creation of the atomic bomb dropped in Hiroshima.

Source: Reuters / one of the maps used in the article

The genre is a mix between data journalism and documentary, filed with historical events to tell the story and a comparison of the nuclear bombs created since World War II. They approached it by starting with a specific moment in History (a more documentary approach) and the turning point of the subject, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing, to latter go on a broader narration about the history of nuclear history (a more data driven approach).

Despite Reuters being a news agency, and thus its audience being oriented to other news corporations, the Graphics section doesn’t necessarily apply to this rule, as they are not in the necessity to write breaking news as they happen, but they give a better context to an event. What does not change is the fact that we are still talking to an audience who is aware of the latest news around the world.

For this specific story, it’s assumed that the reader knows what happened in Hiroshima during World War II, and has some general idea about the countries who have a nuclear arsenal.

An invisible narration with a surprising choice of main character

We have an omniscient and invisible narrator that tells how “Little Boy” was created and then used to bomb Hiroshima. Its introduction early on, with such a nickname, helps the reader associate it as the main character of the story. He is not the only character appearing in it, with a mention to one of its creators, in the name of Robert Oppenheimer.

The article starts with a succinct résumé of the life of Little Boy, from its creation, some detailed aspects of its composition and ending with the impact in Hiroshima.

The next section, called “The birth of Little boy” goes back in time and gets more in detail on the creation of the bomb. We even have a sense of tension, with various key dates that show how fast the bomb was created despite the latter statement:

In modern times, novel weapons are developed not just over years, but sometimes decades.

From one particular event to a general view

Once this setting has been told, we get a broader approach to the story by showing it in a scale with other bombs developed through the years, up to the present and the actual situation of nuclear arsenal around the world, and the evolution of the stockpile of two major forces: The United States and Russia (including the former U.S.S.R.).

The article ends with a somewhat grim view of what may happen next, the US and Russia back to the race or the political tensions between some of the nuclear forces (such as China and India), and that even if it has been 75 years since a nuclear attack, things may (or may not) change.

Alternative choices

In my opinion, this story could have been told quite differently, but this meant not taking in account the editorial choices the Reuter’s journalists had to have in mind. Later on, I will also describe about a few alternative ideas I had in mind, while respecting the editorial choices made on the article.

One of the problems I had when I started reading the article, was that it gave me the wrong impression that the main story was about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Before you even have the headline, you can see a small picture that shows you a map of Japan and the route the planes took from the Mariana Islands to their destination. And before the headline you can also read “Hiroshima 75th Anniversary”.

Taking that into account, I would have preferred a more historical approach to it, with some storytelling around that event. In this case it would be more centered in that one bombing and not the nuclear arms race that happened later on.

One of the ideas that popped in my mind, would have been to make some preparations before publishing the article, with a short thread on Twitter. It could have been a fictional (with historical facts) recreation of that day. How the soldiers prepared themselves, the travel from the base to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and even to let people know that Nagasaki wasn’t the primary target, but Kokura.

Since we are talking of an event that occurred 75 years ago, not that many people may be aware of how it came to be, aside from the bombing, this would have been a good occasion to teach newer generations, and even older ones, and at the same time attract a new audience to your work.

The other vision I had in mind, would still take in account the editorial choices with the change and addition of small aspects that would help the reader understand better the impact of the bomb. Since you’re trying to commemorate the anniversary of an old event, why not refresh the memory of the audience.

The first one would still use Twitter as a way to introduce us to the story, but this time I would have put in use Reuters archive (with a Twitter account dedicated to that). With a tone similar to the twitter account known as “ World War I Live”, showing how Reuters covered the bombing of Hiroshima, with news articles, and some image/video archive. Broadening the few ones used in the article.

An example of what Reuters could have done, using their own archive

For the story in itself, I would have used an interactive map for both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The addition of an actual map of those Japanese cities would be a great visual help to the reader, since not everyone has visited them, and put things in perspective. Enabling the possibility to compare between the maps that show the destruction, and how both places look today.

The addition of a recent picture (or even a drawing) of the Genbaku Dome, which is one of the few buildings that survived the blast, would have been more than enough in Hiroshima’s case.

To finish, I would have added a couple of paragraphs to what happened later on, with even some testimonies of people who survived the blast, to create a connection between the main character of the story, Little Boy, and its victims. All this can be achieved even staying true to Reuters neutral approach to tell its stories.

A photo, taken in 2017, of the Genbaku Dome in Hiroshima

Why it matters

Despite the fact I would have gone a different approach, at least in a personal level, I still view the article has brilliantly written. Once you have read the entire article, it perfectly encapsulated the subject of the story: the history of the nuclear bomb. Especially if you consider that it starts with a precise and well known event, giving some context to how those bombings changed the world.

Another interesting aspect of the article, was the use of an object as the character to tell its story and what it signified in the field of nuclear power. And when you put it in scale the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the ones that followed, and see how they almost appear as tiny dots in comparison, is quite frightening. All of it done with a visual graph, and no text necessary.

The possibility of telling (or explaining) a story by combining data visualization (be it interactive or not) and text is an aspect I always have in mind when I see myself doing articles like this one. How I can use both so they complement each other, and not just rephrase what the reader already sees in the graph or map.