Design Techniques for COVID-19 Story Maps: A Quantitative Content Analysis

Story maps have emerged as a popular storytelling device in recent years with cartographers and journalists leveraging geospatial web technologies to create unique spatial narratives. However, empirical research analyzing the design of story maps remains limited. Two recently proposed design frameworks provide promising avenues to characterize story maps in terms of elements of vivid cartography and techniques of map-based storytelling. In this article, I conducted a quantitative content analysis on 117 story maps of COVID-19 to operationalize map-based storytelling and vividness frameworks and to identify common design traits in contemporary story maps. My findings indicated that most story maps are longform infographics that use scrolling to advance the narrative. Stories applied a variety of attention, dosing, and mood techniques to enrich the storytelling experience. Story maps were primarily vivid through their use of color and novelty. Overall, most story maps utilized only a fraction of the map-based storytelling framework techniques. This research also demonstrated that it is challenging to analyze story maps based on these frameworks. Finally, this article improves the frameworks by proposing two new story map techniques and suggesting avenues of refinement.