From Data to Narrative: Automating and Engineering the Art of Data Storytelling

This paper addresses the importance of defining data storytelling and its characteristics, distinguishing it from literary narratives. It explores the research landscape in data storytelling and proposes the essence and characteristics based on the findings. The paper then introduces a data science and data engineering approach for automated generation of data stories. Furthermore, it presents a reference architecture for engineering development of data stories from a software engineering perspective. This article contributes by providing a definition of data storytelling, highlighting its unique features, and offering insights for academic research. It also explores automatic generation methods and introduces core concepts such as atoms, operators, and rules. Lastly, an engineering development approach, including a reference framework, is presented to drive the growth of data storytelling tools and industry ecosystem.