Tutorial of Datawrapper

Introducation

Datawrapper is an online data visualization tool designed specifically for journalists, scholars, and researchers, requiring absolutely no programming knowledge, which provides a really convenient tool for humanistic learners or workers. By ising its intuitive drag-and-drop interface, users can create publication-ready charts in minutes. For digital humanities scholars, Datawrapper is particularly well-suited for creating common humanities data analysis charts such as time series graphs, thematic maps, and geographic distribution maps. More importantly, the charts it generates are fully responsive and can be seamlessly embedded into websites, blogs, or academic papers.

Tutorial

In this tutorial, I will use Datawrapper to create a stacked bar chart that illustrates changes in the distribution of themes in poetry across different decades, perfectly aligning with our need to analyze literary trends.

STEP 1.  Visit the website and sign in

First, visit the Datawrapper website and click “Starting Creating” to get start.

STEP 2. Prepare dataset

Then we need to copy the data we prepared on it or upload csv. format. This is data I prepared

Decade,Love,War,Politics,Nature
1790,5,12,8,0
1800,15,7,10,0
1810,9,4,18,6

STEP 3. Check data accuracy

After uploading the data and clicking proceed, the Datawrapper automatically recognize the data types. We need to check:

• The first column is recognized as “Labels”
• Other columns are recognized as “Values”
• The data format is correct

STEP 4. Creat the plot

After click the Proceed, we can see the chart, and then do:

• Adjust colors: Choose appropriate colors for each theme
• Add title and description: Change the title to fit your topic. For instance, my title is “Evolution of Poetry Themes in the 19th Century”
• Add data source: Cite the data origin if you need
• Do what you want to make a better chart

STEP 5. Export the Chart

After completing the design, click the “Publish” button. Datawrapper will generate:

• Online link: A shareable web link
• ZIP
• PNG image
• PDF

Further Sources:

Datawrapper Official Academy: https://academy.datawrapper.de/

Youtube tutorial videos: https://youtube.com/watch?v=LbDTKOjdg3w