journalism – CLS INFRA

The power of Computational Literary Studies for Journalists

Attention is valuable.

Leveraging fiction and the tools of Computational Literary Studies can provide creative inspiration, better narrative building, and connection to your audience.

Literature can help.

Evidence of past and present culture

Make claims about the past and present identities and values through stories and fictional narratives.

Capacity building: Empathy

Allow the reader / listener to put themselves in another person’s situation and consider things from their point of view.

Image credit: Storyset

Example: Evidence of Island Culture

Root your explanations within the culture that your audience is familiar with and experiences. Contextualise authors’ narratives with their emotional content. For example, these European writers excel at capturing public sentiment towards island cultures:

Sarah-Jane Dobner
José Saramago
Audrey Magee

Example: Emotions of London

Use visual analysis to explore patterns in texts, giving an overview and showing the connections between literary narratives and contemporary cultural discussions.

(Image credit: Emotions of London, Stanford Literary Lab)

Visualisation

A CLS tool that provides a graphical representation of information and data. This provides an accessible way to see and understand patterns. Here, we see the incidence of placenames in writing by Charles Dickens. The larger the circle, the more incidences there are across all of his writing.

Challenges

Time Poverty

Journalists are pressurised to explain issues quickly. New tools must be easy to use and understand.

Influence

Narratives do influence public opinion. They should not obscure facts and intentions.

Accessibility

Users need to understand how to navigate the sheer quantity of literature.

Let CLS get your attention.

For more details on tools, methods, training and more, check our Resources page or contact info@clsinfra.io!