| Resumo: | The human being has been using stories to pass on messages since the dawn of time, which proves the importance of storytelling. A particularly interesting technique for telling stories is the use of visual narratives (VN). By making use of visual elements to complement the narrative, we can enrich a "traditional" story and make it easier to read and comprehend. Throughout this project, we have done our best to study the field of visual narratives on an academic, journalistic and artistic level, as well as trying to understand how we can use visual elements, with particular emphasis on multimedia, to attract the reader and maintain their interest in stories that span over several months or years. Using a mixed method methodology, after completing the bibliographic research, we conducted interviews with five journalists, having later complemented this study with a survey made to readers on the subject of VN. According to the interviewees, the future of digital journalism's storytelling is linked to the use of the long-form, multimedia and interactivity, side by side with visual narratives. However, since text is an essential part of a VN, one must never forget to use it, as a visual narrative cannot exist without it. Nevertheless, it is necessary to find captivating options that help to combat the reader's diminishing attention span. Bearing in mind that attention cannot be seen as synonymous with comprehension, it is necessary to rethink our notion of proper ways to convey information and remember that the simplest options are usually the most effective. A narrative visualization survey done to readers allowed us to deepen the issue of information transmission aided by visual elements. The results showed that the timeline remains as the ideal VN format and that people prefer clear divisions of information over more compact formats, such as the wordcloud and photomosaic. It became clear that VN in journalism are seen as an advantage by most scholars, readers and professionals of the field. Based on the gathered information, a first version of a non-functional prototype was created to tell a story over six months, which was later tested in a focus group with five Master's degree students. By applying Canavilhas' Tumbled Pyramid concept to online storytelling, we offer the reader greater control over the story and open up the possibility of reading information from more than one axis, thus facilitating the capture and maintenance of their focus. We also applied the concept of curiosity gap, providing the reader with nothing but the necessary information at first glance, hoping to incite them to further explore the prototype. A second version was later created and tested with readers through a second survey, in order to understand the limitations it still had. The final results showed that, although there is still room for improvement, the developed prototype is not only an effective method of transmitting information, but it is also preferred by the vast majority of surveyed people over traditional news reading.
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