Social scholars and data journalists can learn from each other in validating external data sets. Both check data sources through citations and consult experts to verify data quality and stories. Scientists ensure data accuracy through testing and calling for more sources, while journalists clarify meanings and gather human perspectives to check their narratives. Collaboration allows each to strengthen fact-checking and benefit from the other's expertise.

1. validating external data sets
what social scholars and data journalists can learn from each another

2.
Hille van der Kaa
@Hillevanderkaa

4. missing data, no value stored
“I need to solve this”

5. missing data, no value stored
“I need to solve this”
missing data, no value stored
“I need to write a story about this”

6. forreporters.com/andrew-lehren/

8. “Trustworthiness and data
management are vital to the success of
qualitative studies … There is a lack of
scientific literature regarding the
structures and processes for managing
large qualitative data sets.”
(White, Oelken, Friesen, 2012)

9. “A simple answer to objective reporting
is the kind of reporting that uses relevant
and reliable sources which is not bias or
slanted to a certain party.”
Ibrahim, Pawanteh, Kee (2011)

10. can I trust and use this dataset?

11. check the data source
what are his/her/its intentions?

12. what is the citation index
of the data owner?
do other journalists
cite the data owner?

13. benefit
do I really need this?
do I really need to use it?

14. check
data gathering?
is this correct?
clarification of the data?
do I understand?

15. missing data
what is wrong?
I need to solve
what is the story?
I need to write

16. internal validation
TEST!
CALL!

17. I need more sources! (do I?)
give me data
check consistency
give me humans
check my story

18. scientists
data journalists
check the
source
(citation)
check the
source
(citation)
check the
data
check the
data
check
benefit
check
benefit
check data
gathering
check
clarification
TEST!
CALL!
more data
sources
more
human
sources

19. scientist to journalist: “You twist everything”

20. “Dear datajournalist,
Please take a look at the
research method yourself
and act a bit more like a
scientist.”

21. journalist to scientist: “Your articles are useless”

22. “Dear scientist,
Try to avoid intellectual
arrogance. There are
other people who are just
as smart.”

23. journalistic data mining
The process of finding correlations or
patterns in large relational databases.
It is the process of analyzing data from
different perspectives and summarizing it
into useful and reliable information.

30. Gross Time Ranking versus Net Time Ranking
‘The net time is the measured time from starting line
to finish line and the gross time is the measured time
from the starting shot until the finish line.
In photo's of the starting line of marathons one can
see thousands of runners who are eager to start.
However, when one stands in the last starting pen,
one can not directly run at full speed.
A kind of human traffic jam arises when the
marathon starts. On the internet people complain
about this difference in time results, because the
ranking is based on gross times.’

34. missing values - solve
‘We discovered that the data of 100
runners lacked. Apparently one scraped
page was added double. We removed
the 100 duplicates.’

35. missing values - story
‘Still, nineteen runners were missing in
the Amsterdam data set.
Perchance these are runners that have
been disqualified.’
Or…

36. ‘To calculate the average position
changes, caused by net ranking, we
converted the difference scores to
absolute figures.
The average position change in the
Amsterdam Marathon was 281.6
places.’

37. scientific outcome
‘We calculated the Kendalls Tau rank
correlation coefficient for the net and
gross ranking of the Amsterdam
Marathon.
This coefficient shows that despite of the
average differences between the
rankings, the net and gross time rankings
are almost equal to each other.’

38. journalistic outcome
‘We spoke Patrick Schuerman from Tilburg
on the phone. Patrick had starting number
11797 in the Amsterdam Marathon of 2013
and had a gross time versus net time
difference of over 21 minutes.
In his opinion, the ranking of the marathon
should happen after net times since these
are the ‘real’ times people ran.’

40. we are both right

41. we can learn from each other

42.
Hille van der Kaa
@Hillevanderkaa
current topic:
a citizen view on the
credibility of machine
written news
http://tinyurl.com/
research-uvt
Part of PhD research
Human Component in
Machine Written Narratives