Accessibility Settings

color options

monochrome muted color dark

reading tools

isolation ruler

Stories

GIJN Webinar — Investigating the Pandemic: Digging into the Data

Editor’s note: This webinar has now taken place. You can see the recording on GIJN’s YouTube channel.

The global pandemic is producing a tsunami of data, and getting a grip on all the numbers is essential. Data journalism can not only fill out an incomplete story but also reveal hidden issues, and it’s critical to be able to analyze published data, find new data sources and understand how to work with the numbers. GIJN’s latest webinar, Digging into the Data, part of our series Investigating the Pandemic, offers cutting-edge tips from two leading data journalism experts.

Giannina Segnini is Director of the Master of Science Data Journalism Program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. While head of the investigative team at La Nacion in Costa Rica, her team’s investigations led to prosecution of more than 50 politicians, businessmen and public servants, including three former presidents. Segnini has trained journalists across the Americas in data journalism. She’s one of the five founding members of The Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP, for its acronym in Spanish) and has received several international prizes for her work.

Rigoberto Carvajal works with Giannina Segnini at CLIP. Previously he was the data expert for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, where he worked on The Panama Papers and other major investigations. Among his projects was transforming ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks database into an interactive web application which lets journalists and the public explore the secretive networks of the offshore world. He is a computer engineer by training and has extensive experience in software development and database administration and analysis.

This one-hour webinar is free and is the thirteenth in a GIJN series, Investigating the Pandemic. Coming soon: investigating pandemic scams with Buzzfeed’s Craig Silverman; following the COVID-19 money trail in Africa; and how to survive as a freelance journalist during the COVID crisis. Watch our Twitter feed @gijn and newsletter for future events.

NOTE: GIJN will offer Arabic and Russian interpretation for this webinar.

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.

Republish this article


Material from GIJN’s website is generally available for republication under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license. Images usually are published under a different license, so we advise you to use alternatives or contact us regarding permission. Here are our full terms for republication. You must credit the author, link to the original story, and name GIJN as the first publisher. For any queries or to send us a courtesy republication note, write to hello@gijn.org.

Read Next

Data Journalism

Data Journalism Top 10: Breaking into Data Journalism, America’s 5G Fail, Thai Pop, Gender Bias, Fake Google Reviews

We often talk about climate change as an issue future generations will confront. But society is already feeling the dangerous impact of rising temperatures as more and more regions around the world slowly become unlivable. The Guardian produced an ambitious data project on this issue as well as another piece examining the shifting carbon center of gravity. The most popular data journalism tweets between October 11-17, as discovered by our NodeXL mapping and human curation, also include stories on the long-expected arrival of 5G technology, the rise of Thai pop, and fake reviews on Google Maps.

Case Studies

Using a Mobile Phone Survey to Investigate South Sudan’s Conflict

In South Sudan, conflict and government repression make it difficult to do on-the-ground reporting, so a team of journalists designed a mobile phone survey to gather data on forced displacement and destruction across the country. Carolyn Thompson explains why their award-winning investigation may offer lessons to others working in repressive environments or facing movement restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic.

GIJN Webinar — Investigating the Pandemic: Evaluating the Evidence

The COVID-19 pandemic narrative is dominated by numbers — mountains of data and seemingly endless statistical models. Yet most of the figures are uncertain at best, often highly flawed and simply untrue at worst. How to deal with the many claims on the truth that are made every day? What should journalists do if the evidence is poor?