ФУНКЦІОНУВАННЯ ІНФОГРАФІЧНИХ РЕСУРСІВ У ТЕКСТАХ НОВИН (НА МАТЕРІАЛІ ОНЛАЙН-НОВИН СЛУЖБ BBC І CNN)

Abstract

The article highlights the use of infographics to effectively present the news material at BBC and CNN web pages. Infographic is a visual representation of information, data and knowledge. The infographic types that are widely used in news texts include maps, different kinds of graphs and charts such as bar/line/pie/column/bubble/gauge/stock/waterfall/flow charts; area/ hierarchy/circuit/tree diagrams; pictographs, timelines. Also, the symbiosis of infographic resources and additional graphic components (images, icons, geometric shapes, colour, numbers, and headers) was taken into account within the scopes of the current research. All of these allow controlling the infographics flow. Both verbal and nonverbal elements are considered to be crucially significant in creating the eye-catching and attention-grabbing infographic picture. Besides, the digital mode and colour play a significant role in presenting the information infographically. Numbers convey large amounts of information briefly and accurately and colour denotes emotionally valuable metaphorical meaning, stylistic and associative properties. The visual and the verbal can be integrated into a single syntagmatic unit. Verbal elements elucidate and decipher the nonverbal symbols, restate the message of the infographic image in a more precise way, distilling just one from the many possible meanings the image might have. Verbal items are represented by means of a single lexeme, a word combination or a simple sentence. Nonverbal components provide the verbal ones with the essential and highly informative visuals by showing the data, presenting many numbers in a small space, making large data sets coherent. They serve a reasonably clear purpose of description, exploration, tabulation and decoration. The visual elements serve as syntax identifying the participants by nonverbal means. Infographic is an effective and powerful tool to explain complex issues in a way that can quickly lead to insight and better understanding by making information easy to digest, educational, and engaging.