South Africa: Using data stories to illuminate official statistics

Introduction

Data stories are short articles (less than 700 words) that are published on Stats SA’s website for a non-technical audience. The purpose of data story is to present an interesting narrative related to a particular topic or statistical publication.

They are published on the home page as an appealing, snappy way to introduce visitors to statistical data via an easy to understand, thought-provoking story. Crafted by Stats SA staff, data stories are often used to bring attention to official publications, highlighting fascinating or surprising pieces of data that relate to the lives of ordinary South Africans.

Data stories can focus on a particular aspect in an official publication, explore time series, link to data from other Stats SA or external sources, discuss methodology, or contribute to a current news topic or social debate.

Data stories are often picked up by the media as they frequently relate to current issues. Data stories can also spur discussion and debate on social media. At the end of the day, data stories increase exposure of Stats SA and the data that the organisation produces.

A data story includes the following elements

A catchy heading
The first line draws attention to the topic being discussed
At least one graphic
A narrative that moves beyond the key results by exploring one or more of the following:

A trend
A table or graph in the publication that isn’t well known
Mention of other publications that might be relevant to the topic
Mention of current news in the media that might be relevant to the story

A list of references

Data visualisation

An important aspect of data stories are the accompanying graphics. Data stories combine one or more kinds of visualisation (e.g. charts, maps, imagery, infographics) with the narrative. The choice of visualization and the storyboarding depend on the nature of the data, the publication and the intended audience.

The impact of data stories

Stats SA published its first data story on 28 June 2013. To date (November 2019), about 300 data stories have been published, covering a wide range of topics drawn from both social and economic statistics.

Statistics drawn from Stats SA’s website show that data stories solicited almost 450 000 unique pageviews in 2017/18, rising sharply from the almost 32 000 unique pageviews recorded in 2013/14.

Data stories were responsible for taking up just over 9% of total web traffic to Stats SA website in 2017/18, higher than the 6% recorded in 2016/17.

Data stories published on Stats SA’s website are often picked up by the media – reprinted in newspapers, appearing on online news sources, mentioned in podcasts and on radio, and appearing on television. Since May 2015, there were over 600 known instances where economic related data stories appeared in the media in some form or another.

Popular data stories often have a high standing in terms of search engine rankings. For example, the phrase “provincial economies” results in Stats SA’s data story on the topic appearing as the first page in the search. This further increases traffic to Stats SA’s website and its reports.