Data driven journalism
Publication Date/Time
2018-06-20T09:45:00+00:00
Increasing impact with Open Data across borders
WHAT IS DATA DRIVEN JOURNALISM?

"_The goal is to explain the news and tell the stories in the most
attractive, accurate and simple way as possible._" Jaime Serra, Data
Journalist, La Vanguardia
[http://www.lavanguardia.com/internacional/index.html].

Data journalists are professionals with a sense for news and the
ability to write compelling stories using data. Data can be a source
of information for data journalists and it can be used to compare,
analyse or aggregate information

 

HOW THE DIGITISATION OF MEDIA LED THE WAY TO DATA DRIVEN JOURNALISM

With the course of the digitisation of media, the gatekeeper to
information was superseded. Publishing houses used to have the
exclusive privilege to receive press releases and invitations for
press conferences to gain and process information for their
publications. Hence, they functioned as a gatekeeper to information,
filtering, selecting and evaluating news. Today information is spread
and shared swiftly via numerous digital channels. This leads to a
flood of information available, creating the opportunity for everyone
to get informed, research for another opinion, vet referenced sources
or contribute to the public discourse. It became easier to retrieve
information and to publish stories on digital platforms. Independent
journalists, now having equal access to information and the
possibility to share their work with others on digital platforms,
gained more recognition and influence.

At the same time the trust in media and the objection against biased
media publications increased. It became more difficult for journalists
to make an impact and create awareness with their publications,
especially if they do not have sufficient support, networks and
financial means at their disposal. The flood of sources, processed
information and publications led to an overload of impressions.
Working with data can help journalists to be forceful in their
argumentation and increase the impact of their publications.

 

DATA ENRICHED PUBLICATIONS CAN BE MORE COGENT

Enriching publications with data or using data to create a compelling
story is a way to increase awareness and receive recognition. Data
based publications provide evidence and tangible, quantifiable
insight. By making information comparable and trends predictable, data
can add significant value to journalists' work. Many best practices
show how data journalism can add insight, engage readers and support
knowledge sharing.

 
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/20180620-knowledge.png]
Data can open up the news-gathering-process, like on Datablog
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog] from the The Guardian
[https://www.theguardian.com/international] for sharing data, context,
and questions. Data can be used to find connections between a vast
amount of documents as The Telegraph [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/]
did with MPs' expenses
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/]. Adrian
Holovaty launched Everyblock [https://www.everyblock.com/], a platform
with an automated process of gathering and combining information from
local governments, the police and Open Data portals to provide local
insights, news, or the crime rate in specific neighbourhoods
[https://www.everyblock.com/crime].

Hans Rosling attracted millions of views across the world with
visualizing world poverty with Gapminder [http://www.gapminder.org/].
David McCandless published the book Information is Beautiful
[http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/], and Knowledge is beautiful
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anKC7krb-c8], where he re-used data,
e.g. putting public spending into context, or the pollution generated
and prevented by the Icelandic volcano. The newspaper Morgenpost
[https://www.morgenpost.de/] launched their initiative Morgenpost
Interaktiv [https://www.morgenpost.de/interaktiv/], that uses data and
data visualisation to make information more tangible and attract a
younger target group.

 

DATA DRIVEN JOURNALISM IS GETTING INCREASED MOMENTUM

In 2011, the European Journalism Centre [https://ejc.net/] founded the
data driven journalism initiative
[http://datadrivenjournalism.net/about] for training, resources and
networking in data journalism. The initiative also includes the Data
Journalism Handbook
[/en/news/data-bible-20-journalists-all-over-world] that as of now is
translated into nine languages and downloaded as open source over
150,000 times. This year the second edition will be published.
Furthermore the initiative launched the MOOC "Doing Journalism with
Data: First Steps, Skills and Tools
[http://datadrivenjournalism.net/about]" and The School of Data
Journalism
[https://schoolofdata.org/2015/04/10/the-school-of-data-journalism-europes-biggest-data-journalism-event/],
the largest data driven journalism event in Europe.

Since 2012, the data journalism awards
[https://www.datajournalismawards.org/] recognise each year the most
outstanding work in the field of data journalism internationally. This
year's winner in the category data visualisation is Life in the camps,
Reuters, UK
[https://uk.reuters.com/article/rpb-gen/reuters-wins-gen-2018-data-journalism-award-for-data-visualization-of-the-year-idUKKCN1IW2XZ].
A publication combining video, still photography, satellite imagery,
mapping and text that shows the living conditions in Rohingya refugee
camps. The Data Journalism Twitter award for the student or young data
journalist of the year was received by Marie-Louise Timcke from
Berliner Morgenpost [https://www.morgenpost.de/]. She convinced the
jury with her professional work and technical skills, but also with
her mindset towards learning and sharing information with the
community.

 

THE FUTURE OF DATA DRIVEN JOURNALISM IN EUROPE

In the multinational and multicultural environment of the European
Union, data driven journalism can close gaps in language and culture
and increase understanding and engagement in policy making. Visualised
data can make complex correlations and situations more comprehendible
and more appealing without the challenge of translation. It can
therefore include more people in the public discourse, for example
when showing the importance or the impact of policy making on local
and European level.

Journalists, working with data, support the opening of data. By
proactively asking for data that could or should be open, data
publishers get encouraged to publish their data. Therefore, it
supports the enforcement of policies demanding opening of data and
data standards. It also can facilitate data quality and continuity of
updating and publishing datasets. Furthermore, by raising awareness
for the benefits, other data re-users are encouraged to further
leverage Open Data. Dialog between data journalists, other data
re-users, data publishers and different target groups is vital to
leverage more of the potential that lies in data driven journalism for
Europe.
