ARTICLE: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-18/how-your-worst-fears-stack-up-against-reality/9277098
The best thing I read this week is this interactive article from ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) News. This piece, titled “How your fears stack up against reality”, shows readers how most common fears are not nearly as scary as they seem. The writers exemplify this by presenting statistics that state how unlikely one is to die from common fears like spiders, falling or choking. The article goes onto describe how irrational fears originate in humans, and why certain fears are considered irrational to begin with.
While the information in the piece is certainly interesting and entertaining, its interactive graphics are the highlight. Readers are to select three fears from a colorful and attractive list of twelve common fears. After clicking on three cutsey cartoon images that represent your fears, a new graphic moves into view that ranks your selected fears by how many Australians have died from them during 2007 to 2016, even providing an exact number. After roughly 5 seconds, this small graph fades into a larger and more comprehensive graph containing more causes of death, many of which weren’t available to be chosen as one of your three fears at the beginning. This larger list shows that common fears like creepy crawlies, fire or shark attacks are fairly irrational, as they result in much fewer deaths than less common phobias do. For example, skin cancer tops the list with 19,839 deaths versus 0 for spider bites. Scrolling down reveals a final graph that utilizes the cute cartoons once more. This final graph, titled “Australia’s worst fears”, shows which fears have been picked the most by readers. Road or rail crash leads the pack with 32,845 votes.
I picked this piece because I feel that it really shows how important media material or interactive components can be to a story’s effectiveness. I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about this article if it had not featured such attractive and fun graphics that changed depending on my unique selections. Sure, the information itself is quite good and I did learn a thing or two – specifically how fears form in babies and how in 10 years not one person died from a spider in Australia (how is that possible?!). But the graphics and other multimedia elements in the article is why the information will stick with me. The interactive lists and how they started small and became more comprehensive was a fantastic way to visualize the content in the story in a memorable and easily digestible way.
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