By Bella Ratmelia, Senior Librarian, Research & Data Services
In January last year, I wrote a ResearchRadar article on Quarto where I discussed how this open-source publishing system provides researchers with powerful tools for research documentation and dissemination. Today, I'm excited to introduce you to "Closeread" - a custom format for Quarto that could take research communication to the next level.
What is Closeread?
Closeread extends Quarto's capabilities by providing "scrollytelling" features to Quarto's HTML page outputs. If you've ever enjoyed the immersive data visualisations in The New York Times such as "Notre-Dame came far closer to collapsing than people knew", "An Inside Look at Covid's Lasting Damage to the Lungs", or "When A.I.'s Output Is a Threat to A.I. Itself", you'll immediately recognise this visual storytelling technique that reveals information as the reader scrolls down the page.
About scrollytelling
Scrollytelling is a web-based visual narrative technique where content dynamically reveals itself as the user scrolls, synchronizing text with visual elements that transform or appear at specific scroll points to create an interactive, guided storytelling experience. This approach turns passive reading into active discovery that's accessible and engaging.
One of the pioneers of this genre is this digital storytelling of "Snow Fall: The Avalance of Tunnel Creek" in New York Times, published in 2012 by John Branch. A study by Tjärnhage et al (2022) suggested that scrollytelling seems to be more favored by younger audience i.e. those under 35, though certain topics and purpose may not lend themselves well to this format.
Closeread in action
Here are some examples of how Closeread would appear in action. These examples are also entries to Closeread Prize contest hosted by Posit PBC last year:
Council housing & neighbourhood income inequality in Vienna by Mathias Schnetzer
This scrollytelling illustrates findings from research conducted by Premrov & Schnetzer (2023) on whether Vienna's council housing model is linked with a higher social mix in the neighrbohood. The original research paper has been published in Urban Studies journal.
Which way do you ski? By Trang Le, Joshua Himmelstein, and Daniel Himmelstein
This scrollytelling tells the story of OpenSkiStats and visualises the methods used to assess ski area orientation. OpenSkiStats is the first open, global, and continuously updating resource of downhill skiing summary statistics.
EURO 2024 Final Scrollytelling Analysis by Óscar Bartolomé Pato
This scrollytelling visualises the movements and key happenings during the final match of EURO 2024 between Spain and England. The moment-to-moment analysis, afforded by Closeread's and interactive features, brings the match to life as you scroll through the page.
Is this easy to setup?
The technical implementation of Closeread is relatively straightforward. The format builds on Quarto's extensible framework which primarily builds on Quarto Markdown format. While there may be some learning curve for Quarto novices when setting up Quarto initially (if you need help with this, SMU Libraries offer workshop series on Quarto at the beginning of every semester, taught by Assoc Prof Kam Tin Siong), creating the actual pages is relatively simple since you'll mostly work with markdown rather than HTML (and perhaps a sprinkle of Observables, R, or Python; depending on which language you use to conduct your data analysis).
From my short experiments with Closeread, the true challenge lies not in the technical implementation, but more in developing an effective narrative storyboard. This requires several key skills:
- Understanding your audience's perspective -- for openly published content, readers will have varying levels of background knowledge and perspectives.
- Breaking complex research into digestible sections while maintaining scientific integrity.
- Creating a logical progression of ideas -- inserting context where needed, as concepts obvious to experts may confuse general audiences.
- Determining appropriate visualizations and considering accessibility needs.
This narrative design process remains a uniquely human task that requires your expertise and insight as a researcher. In my opinion, it doesn't seem like something that AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude can effectively and efficiently assist with (or perhaps not yet).
Should you use Closeread?
Closeread is an exciting new alternative for researchers looking to communicate their findings to broader audiences, as it bridges the gap between academic rigor and public accessibility. In my opinion, it is especially useful for researchers seeking to extend their reach beyond traditional academic circles, as Closeread offers a compelling format that maintains scientific integrity while embracing modern storytelling techniques.
References
Premrov, T., & Schnetzer, M. (2023). Social mix and the city: Council housing and neighbourhood income inequality in Vienna. Urban Studies, 60(4), 752-769. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980221119408
Tjärnhage, A., Söderström, U., Norberg, O., Andersson, M., & Mejtoft, T. (2023, September). The impact of scrollytelling on the reading experience of long-form journalism. In Proceedings of the European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics 2023 (pp. 1-9). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3605655.3605683