Week 6 lecture for MECO3602 Online Media at University of Sydney, '<b>journalism</b>: Emerging data journalism practices'.

1. <b>journalism</b>: Emerging
data journalism practices
Jonathon Hutchinson
@dhutchman
jonathon.hutchinson@sydney.edu.au

2. Today
• The rise of data, even big data
• Explore data journalism
• Emerging opportunities
• Data collection
• Data visualisation
• Incorporating data journalism into your
project

3. http://xkcd.com/77/

5. http://live.wsj.com/video/is-this-the-world-most-connected-man-in-the-world/
465EDB01-B1BE-4764-BA1C-81C2CF898A1F.html#!465EDB01-B1BE-4764-BA1C-
81C2CF898A1F
Chris Dancy

6. Data Journalism
• New archival tools enable journalists to reveal
new relationships, trends or anomalies
• Journalists do not need statistical skills, they
need to determine the newsworthy-ness of
data
• Coupled with crowdsourcing, data journalism
is a very powerful format

8. The current 2013 MP Expenses version:
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/interactive/201
3/sep/12/full-list-mps-expenses-ipsa-data-interactive-2013

9. Check out “How The Guardian is pioneering data
http://www.niemanlab.org/2010/08/how-the-guardian-is-pioneering-data-journalism-with-
free-tools/
journalism with free tools”
By Jonathon Stray
Nieman Journalism Lab

10. But it’s not all roses…
1. Automating research changes the
definition of knowledge
2. Claims to objectivity and accuracy are
misleading
3. Bigger data are not always better data
4. Not all data are equivalent
5. Just because its accessible doesn’t make
it ethical
6. Limited access to big data create new
digital divides
Boyd and Crawford, 2012

11. Mobile Health

12. Potential sources
• Publically available or commercially sold
databases
• Electronic bulletin boards
• Government, business and agency electronic
records
• Specialised databases by news organisations

13. Problematic DBs…
• Not always available
• Potentially incorrect
• No governmental commitment to providing
these records
• Lack of knowledge and/or funds to support
databases

14. NHK and Disaster Journalism
• http://www.nhk.or.jp/d
atajournalism/about/in
dex_en.html

16. Social media DBs
• Public voice on issues, events, people, etc.
• Constantly updated
• Variety of voice
• Draws on rich media and not text alone
• Direct from the platform to you

17. Social media DB problems
• High noise to signal ratio
• Difficult to determine sentiment
• Marginalised opinion
• Requires follow up qualitative research
• You may not receive the ‘fat pipe’ from the
platform provider

24. http://rappers.mdaniels.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/

25. Conclusions
• Lots of data available – institutional and
personal
• Can be contentious data
• Provides new stories and approaches
• Requires additional, supportive research
• Free tools to capture, analyse and visualise

26. This week:
• Check out Storify:
https://storify.com/