Last updated: January 9, 2017
21 maps and charts that explain Ebola by G. Lopez and J. Fong, 2014 [Vox]. These maps and charts help explain what the disease and epidemic are all about -- and why Americans don't have to be as worried for themselves as West Africa when it comes to Ebola.
40 maps that explain the Middle East by M. Fisher, 2014 [Vox]. Here are 40 maps crucial for understanding the Middle East -- its history, its present, and some of the most important stories in the region today.
100 Jahre Tour de France. Das größte Radrennen der Welt ist mehr als Sport. Es ist Geschäft, Spektakel, Doping. Wie die Tour de France drei Menschenleben lenkt. Text, videos, infographics, slideshow. Die Zeit.
American civil war then and now. Interactive, with old and new photographs. The Guardian, 2015.
Anatomy of Katrina. Interactive multimedia application tracking the hurricane from its birth in the open ocean through its catastrophic encounter with the Gulf Coast.
Battle of Waterloo: The day that decided Europe's fate (BBC: iWonder). Timeline, text and illustrations.
Becoming Human. Interactive documentary. BecomingHuman.org was created by the Institute of Human Origins in 2000 and a major upgrade, BecomingHuman 2.0, took place in 2009.
Beneath New York. Documentary based on an interactive map. National Geographic.
Building a More Perfect Union. Congress, the Capitol Building and the Civil War. This online exhibition for the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center examines the story of the Capitol during the years surrounding the Civil War.
China's Great Armada. Interactive feature National Geographic, July 2005.
Churchill and the Great Republic. Interactive exhibition, Library of Congress.
Cinemagraphs. Not exactly a visual narrative website, but nevertheless interesting in this context. Cinemagraphs are still photographs in which a minor and repeated movement occurs, forming a video clip. They are published as an animated GIF or in other video formats, and can give the illusion that the viewer is watching an animation.
Contraception and family planning around the world, with interactive statistical charts. The Guardian, 2016.
Digital Roman Forum. From 1997 to 2003 the UCLA Cultural Virtual Reality Laboratory (CVR Lab) created a digital model of the Roman Forum as it appeared in late antiquity.
Explorers. Umbrella website page of National Geographic, linking to several multimedia stories about the theme 'Explorers'.
Eye of the Storm. Eye of the Storm takes you on a journey through the Civil War. Through this online interpretation, you can experience the life of a Civil War soldier through Sneden's journal entries.
Father Bob the Larrikin Priest. Penguin true story by S. Williams.
Firestorm. Visual narrative, of the same class as Snow Fall, about the Holmes family hiding from a violent bushfire in Tasmania. But what became of them? The Guardian, 2013.
First World War and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy. Virtual exhibition on the history of the war from 1914-1918 in Austria. There is also a German version.
Freedom's Ring. Web presentation produced by the King Institute at Stanford for the 50th anniversary of King’s Speech. It is a Scalar-based, interactive experience of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech which allows users to compare the written and spoken speech, explore multimedia images, listen to movement activists, and uncover historical context.
From rainforest to your cupboard: the real story of palm oil - interactive. The Guardian, 2014.
Genographic Project. A research initiative led by National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Dr. Spencer Wells. Dr. Wells and a team of renowned international scientists are using cutting-edge genetic and computational technologies to analyze historical patterns in DNA from participants around the world to better understand our human genetic roots.
GeoStories. A publishing platform by National Geographic for organizations and journalists to embed place-based multimedia stories in their websites and apps. The format combines maps, multimedia, and narrative to take viewers on tours of places and topics.
Gettysburg. Panic in Pittsburgh, then a nation saved. S. Mellon, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Global guide to the first world war - interactive documentary. Ten historians from 10 countries give a brief history of the first world war through a global lens. Using original news reports, interactive maps and rarely-seen footage, including extraordinary scenes of troops crossing Mesopotamia on camels and Italian soldiers fighting high up in the Alps, the half-hour film explores the war and its effects from many different perspectives. The Guardian, 2014.
Hearing the Music of the Hemispheres. A born-digital, Scalar-based multimodal article by E.B. Mee, incorporating film, video, and audio clips that are integrated in, and central to, the argument.
Henry III Fine Rolls Project. A window into English history, 1216-1272.
Human Evolutionary Highway. Interactive map for investigating human origins, starting with the bones found on the Indonesian island Flores. National Geographic.
Interactive Narratives. Interactive Narratives is designed to capture the best of online visual storytelling as practiced by online and print journalists from around the country and the world. It's goal is to highlight rich-media content, engaging storytelling, and eye-popping design in an environment that fosters interaction, discussion, and learning. The site is sponsored by the Online News Association, which works to foster innovation among online journalists and help those journalists, freelancers, academics, and students learn from the best practitioners in the field and from each other.
Into the Arctic. Explore the natural wonders of the Arctic, threatened by the oil industry. Greenpeace.
Investigating King Tutankhamun. Egypt's most famous pharaoh, King Tut has held us in awe since the discovery of his tomb in 1922. Travel back in time to immerse yourself in the sacred power of his burial chamber. National Geographic.
Jheronimus Bosch interactive. Bilingual (Dutch and English) interactive documentary about the Garden of Earthly Delights by Jheronimus Bosch. Co-production by the NTR and Pieter van Huystee Film.
Keine Zeit für Wut. Branched multimedia story about the Fukushima accident (in German). Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
Last Hijack Interactive: Visual narrative about hijacking by Somalian pirates and their background; published by NRC (in Dutch).
Lewis & Clark. Interactive journey log. When Thomas Jefferson dispatched Lewis and Clark to find a water route across North America and explore the uncharted West, he expected they'd encounter woolly mammoths, erupting volcanoes, and a mountain of pure salt. What they found is to be seen in this interactive application. National Geographic.
Long Strange Trip of Dock Ellis. Meet the man behind baseball's most psychedelic myth. Interesting so-called curtain effects. Outside the Lines.
The Lost Museum. Flash production about the popular 19th century American Museum in New York, which was destroyed by fire in 1865.
Mekong: a river rising. The Guardian.
Monticello Explorer. House and plantation of Thomas Jefferson: the Monticello mountain, general house tour, domestic life, gardens and grounds.
MultimediaShooter. The website will attempt to reveal the ways hardware and software can improve our multimedia/storytelling skills. It will feature a gallery of outstanding multimedia, a tutorial section, podcast and the most comprehensive multimedia archive on the web.
New Adventures for Older Workers. Multimedia narrative about elderly people, retirement and work, with interesting visual effects. PBS Newshour.
Old Photos Of 1900s America Turned Into Stunning 3D Animation. Vintage photography Alexey Zakharov. More of Zakharov on Behance. See also: How Alexey Zakharov Brought Vintage Photos to Life in 3D.
Oplontis Project. The mission of the Oplontis Project is to conduct a systematic, multidisciplinary study of Villa A ("of Poppaea") and Villa B ("of Lucius Crassius Tertius") at Oplontis (Torre Annunziata, Italy). Under the direction of John R. Clarke and Michael L. Thomas of the University of Texas at Austin and in collaboration with the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei, an international team of scholars is working to publish a definitive studies of all aspects of these sites. Publication will be "born digital" within the Humanities E-Book Series of the American Council of Learned Societies.
Our Mother Tongues. The site contains a language map, using Google's My Maps with custom markers representative of the twelve tribes, a voices mosaic page where the viewer can hear Native Americans speak their mother tongues. In addition, the website features ten video clips from Native American leaders, historians, linguists and others discussing the importance of learning one's mother tongue. Each featured community has a dedicated page where community members talk about why they are learning their mother language.
Out in the Great Alone. The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race pushes participants to the brink on an unforgiving trek to the end of the world. And, as one writer who tracked the race by air discovers, that is exactly the point (B. Philips). Grantland.
Performing Archive: Edward S. Curtis + "the vanishing race". This web presentation powered by Scalar, is the productof a three-month pilot project for the Claremont Center for Digital Humanities. At its core it is an aggregation of several existing archival visual, material, and sonic collections based on the work of Edward S. Curtis, an early 20th century photographer.
Prison Valley. Interactive and prize wining web documentary about the prison in Cañon City, Colorado.
Propaganda. Online exhibition, which examines the Nazi propaganda. U.S. Holocaust Museum.
Remembering Pearl Harbor. Commemorates Pearl Harbor’s 60th anniversary. It chronicles the hours and minutes of the attack on Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941, while personal accounts of survivors give visitors a sense of the fear and courage spurred by the attack. An Attack Map guides site visitors through a collection of zooming maps integrated with a timeline of events, the site enables users to literally hover over Pearl Harbor and experience the attack as it progressed throughout the day. National Geographic.
Rome Reconstructed (YouTube).
Sea Change. The Pacific's Perilous Turn. The Seattle Times, September 12, 2013.
Serengeti Lion. Life on the plains with the Vumbi pride. National Geographic.
Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek. Multimedia documentary by J. Branch. New York Times, December 2012.
Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae - digital collection. The Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae is a collection of engravings of Rome and Roman antiquities, the core of which consists of prints published by Antonio Lafreri and gathered under a title page he printed in the mid-1570's. The website offers virtual itinerary to explore the collection, with an expert as your guide.
The Town That Wouldn't Disappear. One Australian mining community is putting coal on trial. B. lagan and E. Rubeli. The Global Mail.
A Tour through Ancient Rome in 320 C.E. (YouTube).
Theban Mapping Project. Since its inception in 1978, the Theban Mapping Project (TMP, now based at the American University in Cairo) has been working to prepare a comprehensive archaeological database of Thebes. During the last decade, the TMP has concentrated on the Valley of the Kings. Modern surveying techniques were used to measure its tombs. From the data collected, the TMP is preparing 3-D computer models of the tombs. For the TMP staff, sharing their work with the interested public is just as important as what they do in the field. This has been done through a series of publications and this growing website.
Time and Navigation. Navigating at sea, in the air, in space, through satellite. Smithonian: National Air and Space Museum, National Museum of American History.
Tempus Fugit: Time Flies. In this exhibit explore the concept of time in works of art dating from 900 BCE to the present. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
Too Young to Wed. Media rich story about child marriage. United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
Unknown Territories. Senses of place in the canyon lands of the American West. This project combines linear and interactive cinema in a non-traditional documentary about environmental conditions of the desert American West. In looking at relationships between digital interface and spatial practices the project asks, how do interactive formats expand ways to understand how places are imagined, encountered, represented and re-imagined? The original interactive approach offers viewers something unique in cinema: choice-making. A virtual environment draws viewers into a film editor's process of weaving materials together.
Valley of Shadow. Two communities in the American Civil War. Virginia Center of Digital History, University of Virginia Library.
View from the Shard: a new and expanded panorama of London – interactive. A look at a 360-degree, augmented-reality panorama of London's view, from the Shard's public observation deck. Multimedia journalism, The Guardian, 2013.
Vikings. The North Atlantic Saga. From the rise of the Scandinavian kingdoms during the Viking Age (A.D.750 to 1050) to the demise of the Greenland colonies around A.D. 1500, Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga examines the history of the western expansion of the Vikings and sheds new light on a well known culture. National Museum of Natural History, Arctic Studies Center.
Virtual Jamestown. The Virtual Jamestown Archive is a digital research, teaching and learning project that explores the legacies of the Jamestown settlement and "the Virginia experiment." Virtual Jamestown is a product of collaboration between Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia, and the Virginia Center for Digital History at the University of Virginia. National Museum of Natural History, Arctic Studies Center.
Virtual Roman House and part two (YouTube).
Vision of Britain through Time. The project brings together historical surveys of Britain to create a record of how the country and its localities have changed. It was created by Humphrey Southall and the Great Britain Historical GIS Project ("GIS" stands for "Geographical Information System"). We are based in the Department of Geography of the University of Portsmouth.
Visualizing Cultures - Image-Driven Scholarship. Visualizing Cultures was launched at MIT in 2002 to explore the potential of the Web for developing innovative image-driven scholarship and learning. The VC mission is to use new technology and hitherto inaccessible visual materials to reconstruct the past as people of the time visualized the world (or imagined it to be). Topical units to date focus on Japan in the modern world and early-modern China.
Voyage of the Slave Ship Sally. In 1764, a one-hundred ton brigantine called the 'Sally' embarked from Providence, Rhode Island, to West Africa on a slaving voyage. This voyage was one of roughly a thousand transatlantic slaving ventures launched by Rhode Islanders in the colonial and early national period, and one of the deadliest. Records of the Sally venture are preserved and are displayed on this website, offering an opportunity to retrace the journey of a single slave ship.
What type are you? Users interact with a psychoanalyst who picks the perfect font for their personality type.
Year at War. Stories of soldiers in the Afghanistan war. New York Times.