What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for October 3-9), including items from Forbes, Visualising Data, Le Temps, and more.
I was on a call recently with some CIO’s and CTO’s from different American cities who were lamenting about the lack of political interest in open data. They complained that hackathons and data jams are succeeding in building vibrant communities of developers in their cities but that politicians just aren’t into this. They don’t see the value and they rarely show up to participate. I’ve seen the same trend in Europe, Asia, and Africa.
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for September 26-October 2), including items from Zeit Online, CPJ, OUseful.info, and more.
Paper trails have always been of great interest to investigative journalists. Digging into documents can tell a great deal about people, organizations, and what they’re up to. Here’s today’s Doc of the Day, a contract recently filled by the U.S. Secret Service, the law enforcement group charged with protecting the president and other political VIPs. It’s for “Dark Web Data Subscription.” More than 90% of the Web is thought to be unsearchable by Google and other common search engines. This is often called the dark or deep Web, and it includes sites behind firewalls and passwords, unusual formats, criminal and other hidden networks, and lots and lots of databases.
GIJN’s Board of Directors admitted seven new members this week, bringing our membership to a record 108 organizations in 46 countries. Please join us in welcoming: ANCIR, CORRECT!V, Dossier, IDL-Reporteros, OjoPúblico, RISE-Moldova, and WCIJ.
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for September 18-25), including items from BBC, The Guardian, and JeuneAfrique, among others.
You’ve probably seen the spoof broadcasts of The Daily Show and similar “fake” TV news programs: the realistic sets, the bogus “live” shots from overseas hot spots, the absurd interviews. While steeped in wisecracks and satire, the shows have a hard political edge and often stir controversy. Increasingly, in the absence of serious news from the “real” news media, they also are getting into actual journalism, prompting one scholar to call the phenomenon “investigative comedy.”
How can online research tools aid the work of investigative reporters and others looking into transnational financial flows, corporate structures and other illicit activities of organized crime and global business? Google and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) brought together a small group of investigative journalists and technologists from around the world to examine the answers to this question at their first Investigathon in London last month.
Open Data should be Open, right? When I read “Open Data” I think it means the data can be used openly by anyone for any purpose. But it ain’t so. Read the fine print in the terms and conditions and you’ll quickly realize that Open Data really means wide open liability. How on earth can Open Data restore trust in government if the governments publishing their own Open Data won’t even accept responsibility for the quality of what they publish?
The civil society movement campaigning for government openness reached a significant landmark yesterday with the Latin American country of Paraguay enacting the world’s 100th access to information law. Twenty years ago, in 1994, there were just 15 access to information laws globally. But “there are still many challenges ahead,” says Helen Darbishire of Access Info Europe. “The quality of access to information laws varies enormously. There is insufficient transparency in practice and we urgently need more comparative data on how these laws are working.”
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter for the last two weeks, September 3-17. Included are items from the crowdsourcing, cross-border project Generation E; Detective.io; ICIJ; Switzerland’s Le Temps; and Germany’s CORRECT!V, FAZ, and Berlin Morning Post.
Citizen reporters have played a notable role in journalism in developed countries such as France and the United States, and emerging markets such as China, India, Jordan, Estonia, and Nicaragua. Citizen reporters are using the internet, video, mobiles, and other digital tools to gather information, interview people, watch events, seek comments from experts, and publish their stories via blogs, videos, Wikipedia, and other platforms.
Africa’s premier investigative journalism, Power Reporting, returns to Johannesburg, South Africa, this November 3-5. The annual event is organized by the Journalism Programme of the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University), a GIJN member. The three-day conference is an opportunity to learn new skills, hear about the top investigative stories and share experience on investigative techniques, data journalism, and more.
Digitization is one of the primary driving forces behind recent changes in journalism, including news values, professional ethics, workflows, working conditions, and newsroom management. The Mapping Digital Media study shows that digital media have not only changed journalism practices in developed countries but have also significantly shaped the way journalists work in emerging markets. Digital media bring opportunities, risks, and challenges to journalism. While digitization facilitates news gathering and dissemination, it does not necessarily foster better journalism. Plagiarism, lack of verification, and other unethical journalistic practices have increased alarmingly in many countries.
Digitization has been one of the main drivers behind the changing nature of journalism as it affected news values, professional ethics, workflows, working conditions and newsroom management. On the positive side, it tremendously improved access to information and dissemination channels, but is this ever-more-connected world a better place for independent journalism? The digital switch-over has produced an unprecedented crisis in the supply of public interest journalism— in journalism that is independent, contextual, accountable, and relevant to citizenship.
Come join us in Manila! Registration is now open for Asia’s groundbreaking first investigative journalism conference, November 22-24. Check out our new conference site, put together by GIJN and its partners, the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. We have speakers from more than 15 countries and state-of-the-art panels on digging out hidden facts online, tracking money across borders, cutting-edge data analysis, funding your investigation, and much more.
“Big Data.” It seems like the phrase is everywhere. The term was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013, appeared in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary by 2014, and Gartner’s just-released 2014 Hype Cycle shows “Big Data” passing the “Peak of Inflated Expectations” and on its way down into the “Trough of Disillusionment.” Big Data is all the rage. But what does it actually mean? we asked 40+ thought leaders in publishing, fashion, food, automobiles, medicine, marketing, and every industry in between how exactly they would define the phrase “Big Data.” Their answers might surprise you!
Where I live, it’s common to hear people say that the U.S. government destroyed the World Trade Center. What looks to me and my reporter colleagues like a Russian invasion of Ukraine looks to them like a murky situation where no one is right or wrong. But when someone said to me over dinner that a Polish fighter plane had shot down MH17 over Ukraine, citing yet another obscure Internet “news” site, something snapped. I turned away, but the problem is still there.
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for August 28- September 3), including items from Visualoop, the New York Times, and Journalist’s Resources, among others.
Behind the scenes, proponents of freedom of expression are working to ensure that independent media is for the first time a priority in the global development goals set by the UN and its member states. As part of that push, last week more than 300 representatives from media NGOs, journalist unions and associations, civil society groups, governments, and international agencies gathered for The Bali Media Forum organized by UNESCO. The three-day meeting, on August 26-28 in Bali, Indonesia, ended with a clarion call to make access to information and free media a development priority.
In the past week, three stories on three very different issues showed once again how satellite images, until recently confined to the weather report, are now the stuff of front-page news. All three are important stories with wide-ranging implications on public policy. But they also raise questions about the reliability of satellite imagery as proof and the ability of journalists – and their audiences – to make sense of them. Just like photographs, satellite images without context can distort the truth. And like photography, interpreting satellite imagery is as much art as it is science.
Norway’s Association for Investigative Journalism — SKUP — is holding its first big data conference on October 18, with top data journalists from across Scandinavia and overseas. The intensive day includes 16 sessions of 90 minutes each, ranging from basic to advanced levels. SKUP will also host the next Global Investigative Journalism Conference — in October 2015.
Even as a growing number of authoritarian regimes crack down on the political press, business news is thriving. And the coverage is more vigorous than might be expected. Enterprising journalists are exposing mismanagement and unearthing shady business deals—and even at times exposing official corruption—that otherwise might never see the light of day. While other journalists face censorship, jail, or worse, business journalists are eschewing political stories to provide news and statistics on markets, business deals, and international trade.The expansion of economic and business journalism is not a substitute
for truly free and independent media. But it is a sign that—even in the most repressive environments—the demand for trustworthy information is strong and growing.
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for August 13-27), including items from JeuneAfrique, the NYTimes, and Medium Magazine, among others.
Who should you trust? (Or, for all you pedants out there, whom should you trust?) It’s an important question for all of us, not least when you’re buying a used car (and believe me, I know.) But it’s probably even more important for journalists, who talk to strangers on a regular basis and need to make snap judgments about how much faith we should have in what they say. So here’s the bad news: You shouldn’t trust yourself to figure out who you should trust.
We hear a lot about the next Silicon Valley, but we don’t hear much about the Valley of Death. That is where 80 percent of tech startups go to die. Startups die or join the walking dead mainly for two reasons: they don’t have enough cash or they don’t have enough knowledge to get to the next stage of development. They are unable to show investors that their project could be commercially viable. The Media Factory News Accelerator, based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, wants to change those odds of making it across the Valley of Death.
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for August 1-12), including items from Edward Tufte Website, Datenjournalist.de, and The New York Times, among others.
