Data Journalism (City Online Journalism wk8)

Online Journalism City University Paul Bradshaw Data journalism

1. What is it? 2. Where to get it 3. How to get it Themes

“ Each weekday, my computer program goes to the Chicago Police Department's website and gathers all crimes reported in Chicago.” Adrian Holovaty

Times film genres

Times Data Blog

” QUOTE” Now is a good time.

“ The Tribune’s more than three dozen interactive databases , collectively have drawn three times as many page views as the site’s stories . [75% of traffic]” http://bit.ly/dj2dmz

. What is data?

Numbers Text Live data Behavioural data Images, audio, video Anything that a computer can work with

Start with the data and look for the stories? (MPs’ expenses) Or start with a lead and look for the data? Passive vs active data journalism

Data Journalism Continuum

Data.gov.uk Guardian datastore Openlylocal,Open Corporates, Open Charities, Who's Lobbying etc. FOI requests (WDTK), disclosure logs Books - British Political Facts Finding

GetTheData.org WDMMG forums MySociety mailing lists Open Data Cookbook Wolfram Alpha forum Finding – data communities

Government - national and local 'Monitors' - regulators & other bodies Charities, pressure groups Institutions - academic, scientific, health Business, finance Media, entertainment, sport Other secondary sources

Site:gov.uk (etc) Filetype:pdf (etc) Imagine the page you hope to find, including jargon etc. Database contents are invisible Google News alerts: report OR review Advanced search

"quotes search for exact phrases" "disclosure logs" site:nhs.uk + ensures page contains word: +logs - omits results with word: -wooden * wildcard, e.g. "deaths * custody" ~ synonyms, e.g. ~deaths Advanced search

Tip: use overseas sources
US medicine databases
EU subsidy databases
Swedish people data
International police agency correspondence with UK

RSS, XML, JSON, RDF - and APIs Scraperwiki Outwit Hub Yahoo! Pipes Spreadsheet formulae (look them up) Feeds and scrapers

Format? Table? Pattern? URL? 'Structured' data

http://www.eib.org/projects/pipeline/?start=2009&end=2010&status=&region=&country=united+kingdom&sector=

'Structured' HTML? (Use Firebug)
 
Case Ref: FS50295557 Date: 04/11/2010 Public Authority: London Borough of Southwark Summary: 
The complainant requested a copy of the authorities approved business plan [...] Section of Act/EIR & Finding: FOI 1 - Complaint Upheld , FOI 10 - Complaint Upheld 
<a title="Opens in new window" href="~/media/documents/decisionnotices/2010/fs_50295557.ashx" target="_blank">View PDF of Decision Notice FS50295557</a>

=ImportHTML("http://bob.com/mytable", "table", 1) =ImportXML("http://backtweets.com/search.xml?itemsperpage=100&...”) =ImportFeed("http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?rpp=20&page=1&q="&A2) Spreadsheet formulae

Fetch Page module Regex Yahoo! Pipes

"A problem for sites who want to provide privacy while allowing new users to join easily. Scraping services may constitute a violation of terms of service; tactics often resemble a denial-of-service attack or a security exploit." Ethics

. Questions?

Links OnlineJournalismClasses.tumblr.com Delicious.com/paulb/cityoj08 Delicious.com/paulb/datajournalism Delicious.com/paulb/visualisation Delicious.com/paulb/data

- Use advanced search to find data
- Use tools to scrape data
Visualise a politician's speeches using Wordle or Many Eyes
Read up on some of the tools or technologies before the lab
Lab

Books Darrell Huff - How To Lie With Statistics Blastland & Dilnot - The Tiger That Isn't Donna Wong - The WSJ Guide to Information Graphics Brian Suda - A Practical Guide to Designing with Data

. Assignments

Enough time? 10 credits = 100 hours Lectures = 15 hours Group blog = 60 hours (75%) Strategy = 20 hours (25%) (Some in labs) + 5 hours on other issues

Enough time? Blog Just an example: 10 posts ranging from simple links to interviews, analysis, experiment 5.5 hours ave per week x10 weeks = 55 hours + 5 hours to write evaluation

Enough time? Strategy Just an example: 12.5 hours researching community 30 mins per week x10 weeks with community (2.5 hours) 5 hours analysis & write up

Group blogs
8 areas:
Online video; 2. Online audio
3. Data; 4. UGC
5. Community management
6. Mobile; 7. Social media
8. Infographics and photography

Criteria Ass1: Newsgathering/research Production Law, ethics and strategy Ass 2: Research Analysis Execution

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Data Journalism (City Online Journalism wk8)

by Paul Bradshaw

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