What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from July 29 to August 4 finds a number of articles related to the climate crisis, including the BBC’s piece on tree planting and its interactive tool on temperatures across the world, as well as Alberto Cairo’s blog post on misleading charts created by climate deniers. We also found useful tips and tools: a data GIF maker by Google News Initiative, Datajournalism.com’s strategies for teaching data journalism, and Paul Bradshaw’s tutorial on how to extract numeric data from phrases.
How Much Warmer Is Your City?
The BBC’s Visual and Data Journalism team created an interactive tool to show how much the temperature in 1,000 major cities across the world has changed since 1900 and how much it could increase in coming years. The piece also includes a beautiful spinning globe visualizing how July temperatures have increased in the last 10 years compared with 1880 to 1990. (For ideas on how to investigate the climate crisis, see GIJN’s Climate Resource.)
Must see: This powerful and beautiful interactive where you can find out how temperatures have changed where you live and what may lie ahead. By @nassos_ @cguibourg @inari_ta @PrinaShah2 @Rushlet_ @aleecsanderiv @rincon_phttps://t.co/FwA8gVF7k1 #climatechange pic.twitter.com/YTVFNV18bf
— Christine Jeavans (@chrisjeavans) August 2, 2019
Extract Numeric Data From Phrases
How can you take a collection of words such as “11 years and 5 months imprisonment” and convert that into something that could be used in spreadsheet calculations? Paul Bradshaw writes a blog post explaining how to extract numbers from phrases.
The love I have for #spreadsheets grows exponentially every day
When you get data in sentences: how to use a spreadsheet to extract numbers from phrases https://t.co/yG6iSWvjET #ddj— mahima singh (@amiham_singh) July 31, 2019
Data GIF Maker
Bring your data visualizations to life with Google News Initiative’s data GIF maker tool, launched in March. The tool makes it easy for people to create simple visuals that compare different terms, or contrast between numbers. Read more here.
Google has a fab animated gif maker to help show off your key data points.https://t.co/NbvlWpkLYK
For more flexibility, branded colours & complex #data, @datasaurus_rex has a lovely tutorial: https://t.co/4cbaKSdbJt pic.twitter.com/jwEVhMWIb4— Digitangle (@Digitangle) August 3, 2019
Lying Climate Charts
Data visualization expert Alberto Cairo finds climate change deniers to be a steady source of lying charts. Here, he explains the usual tricks climate deniers utilize to skew readers’ perceptions, using a chart example from The Global Warming Policy Forum.
Lying with graphs has entered a new era with climate change deniers.https://t.co/6BStag2l3T
— emsmid (@emsmid1) July 28, 2019
Strategies for Teaching Data Journalism
In today’s data-intensive society, journalists must learn how to accurately gather and analyze data for stories. And journalism teachers need to equip students with these skills. Data lecturers Nouha Belaid, Anastasia Valeeva, Bahareh Heravi, Roselyn Du, Kayt Davies, Adrian Pino, Eduard Martín Borregon, Soledad Arreguez, and Jeff Kelly Lowenstein share their strategies for teaching data journalism.
What are the most effective ways to introduce students to data? From Argentina to Kyrgyzstan, we gathered reflections from teachers in 7 countries, with very different media landscapes but many common challenges: https://t.co/Rda7ou2nP4 #ddj #datajournalism #journalism #jschool pic.twitter.com/qDaQH6njV7
— DataJournalism.com (@datajournalism) August 1, 2019
The Race for Democratic Donors
Attracting individual donors is particularly important for Democrats in the 2020 US presidential race as the Democratic National Committee is using grassroots fundraising as a qualification standard for the debates. Candidates will need at least 130,000 unique donors to qualify for the next round of debates in September. The New York Times mapped out which candidates are winning the race for the most individual donors and in which states.
ALSO these are full-on interactive maps! Zoom in and explore and find out which candidate is picking up the most donors where you live. https://t.co/suR8xRpoiL pic.twitter.com/B4tRwBtRV0
— KK Rebecca Lai (@kkrebeccalai) August 2, 2019
RAWGraphs Plans an Update
Are you a user of the open source data visualization software RAWGraphs? The last major release of the software was two years ago and the team is planning a crowdfunding campaign to improve it with more charts, more control on exports, more visualization options, and more templates, among other ideas. Sign up for updates on the campaign that will start October 1.
Hey RAWGraphs lovers and followers!
We are planning a #crowdfunding campaign on @Indiegogo to support the design and development of a brand new version of #RAWGraphs.Want to know more about our campaign?
Sign up here👉https://t.co/sk6dDjJFbc and spread the voice! pic.twitter.com/aqyGWhJ18c— RAWGraphs (@rawgraphs) July 30, 2019
Financial Statements Factory
Novaya Gazeta analyzed the financial statements of the electoral candidates for Moscow City Duma, a Russian regional parliament in Moscow. It found quite a number of financial reports had suspicious similarities, suggesting a centralized production of these documents.
Документы «самовыдвиженцев» в Мосгордуму (из числа членов «Единой России» и их соперников (из числа системной оппозиции) готовила одна команда специалистов!
Их выдали цифры и буквы.Подробности в расследовании дата-отдела «Новой»
➡️ https://t.co/h0esVy2lDw pic.twitter.com/PbjuqVmBq1— Новая Газета (@novaya_gazeta) August 1, 2019
Plant Trees to Combat Climate Crisis
A British Committee on Climate Change recommends that 30,000 hectares of woodland should be planted annually. And if other carbon reduction targets are not achieved, that number may have to rise to 50,000 hectares. The BBC visualizes the most popular tree planting areas and rates between 2010 and 2018.
👩🌾🌳 #Climatechange: Tree planting rise 'needs to happen quickly' if other carbon reduction targets are not achieved.#READ @BBCNews article here https://t.co/QnJj8xDgc3 pic.twitter.com/xwUn2bN8mL
— Connect4Climate (@Connect4Climate) August 1, 2019
Open Data Camp UK #7
The 7th edition of Open Data Camp UK, an unconference entirely devoted to sharing ideas and challenges around open data, takes place at the Geovation Hub in London on November 2 and 3. Tickets will be released at 4 p.m. on August 15.
Bam! Nabbed my @ODcamp ticket super quick!
Get your free one here https://t.co/E2GQJbnDYB#opendata #unconference pic.twitter.com/HuEO8etq94
— Jen 🚀 (@digidatajen) July 31, 2019
Thanks, once again, to Marc Smith of Connected Action for gathering the links and graphing them. The Top Ten #ddj list is curated weekly.
Eunice Au is GIJN’s program coordinator. Previously, she was a Malaysia correspondent for Singapore’s The Straits Times, and a journalist at the New Straits Times. She has also written for The Sun, Malaysian Today and Madam Chair.
For a look at Marc Smith’s mapping on #ddj on Twitter, check out this map.
