Mona Chalabi is a data journalist with the Guardian. I’ve been watching her on the Netflix show The Fix, during which she enters at a critical point in the conversation to reveal some data about the episode’s subject, e.g. immigration, or gentrification, or artificial intelligence. The data contextualizes the problem before the panel of comedians provide a jokey solution.
Mona’s data grounds the conversation. Perhaps it’s just because it provides something that is informational during a current events show that is run by comedian. However, I think there’s some additional power: Mona uses SLOW REVEAL GRAPHS to tell the story of her data!
Here’s a video of Mona speaking at the Adobe 99U Conference about this technique, which she calls “Sequence, Sequence,… Surprise!”