The Nieman Journalism Lab has a nice round-up of some beautifully informative and often luscious work that "visualizes" news -- that is, turns news trends (and the social concerns and changes they document) into visual representations of data, like changing maps, splats of paint, or -- a favorite -- a simple needle meter.
For example:
An interview with Tim Schwartz (who has more great stuff at his site) about his indexing of various terms as used by the Times over the decades:
Tim Schwartz visualizes history (1851-2008) through word usage in The New York Times from Nieman Journalism Lab on Vimeo.
This paint splatter by Jer Thorp, as described by the J-Lab blog:
Below is his latest piece, which visualizes the frequency of "socialism" (orange) and "capitalism" (green) in the Times between 1984 and 2009, sweeping around like a clock. The bursts -- for instance, of socialism in 1989 -- capture the charged events they represent.
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