The information design of interactive press visualization in the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic: the case study of The New York Times newspaper

Abstract

This article assesses the role played by the information design of the interactive visualization of the press in the spread of the COVID 19 pandemic, taking as a case study the newspaper The New York Times, a world reference in scientific journalism that has played a fundamental role as an informant on this health crisis. To do this, a content analysis method was integrated into different interactive journalistic visualizations (N=103) that the newspaper published from December 2019 (beginning of the pandemic) to December 2020 (beginning of the first acquisitions of vaccines), and were coded to determine, identify and examine detailed patterns in three axes of study: I) the informative approach; 2) visual and multimedia resour-ces; and 3) type of interaction. The results indicate that the design of interactive press information in the dis-semination of the COVID 19 pandemic focuses mainly on data journalism through visualizations with non-fi-gurative and hybrid graphical interfaces with access to geo-located databases that offer the possibility of exploring the visualization of data in an innovative way and in real time on the total number of contagion ca-ses per day (hospitalized, percentage of bed occupan-cy and number of beds available in hospitals), cases per capita and deaths from coronavirus by state and counties in the United States, as well as other coun-tries. These practices are associated with interopera-bility activities and globally linked data, which provide the opportunity to generate greater knowledge about the behavior of this pandemic in the world and allow more effective management of risks to human health.