The latest tools and resources from the Research Desk: new world of drones databases available, reports from the European Parliament Research Service, Top Green Companies in the World 2015, a handy free extension to download entire pages or individual files, and more.
We’re already seeing the use of drones proliferate across a whole variety of stories — from incredible imagery of the vastness of the natural world to investigations that couldn’t be told with conventional cameras, to views of the inaccessible right under our noses. So how are the drone journalists of the future being trained for their work?
We’re back with another selection of web resources and reports that might be of interest to journalists around the world. On the list this week: new reports from the International Labour Organization, Congressional Research Service, and UK House of Commons; and tools to search domain ownership, load tweets into a spreadsheet, and search open data. Good hunting!
Search engines are an intrinsic part of the array of commonly used “open source” research tools. Together with social media, domain name look-ups and more traditional solutions such as newspapers, effective web searching will help you find vital information. Many people find that search engines often bring up disappointing results from dubious sources. A few tricks, however, can ensure that you corner the pages you are looking for, from sites you can trust. The same goes for searching social networks and other sources to locate people.
Online research is often a challenge for traditional investigative reporters, journalism lecturers and students. Information from the web can be fake, biased, incomplete or all of the above. Offline, too, there is no happy hunting ground with unbiased people or completely honest governments. In the end, it all boils down to asking the right questions, digital or not. This chapter gives you some strategic advice and tools for digitizing three of the biggest questions in journalism: who, where and when?
The good people at the Journalism in the Americas Blog, who just hosted the always interesting International Symposium on Online Journalism, alerted us to a useful new video, “Data Journalism: An Explication.” Here are journalists doing their best to define data journalism.The video comes from Cindy Royal, an associate professor, and Dale Blasingame, a lecturer, in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Texas State University.
The Research Desk with Gary Price is back, with its second installment, featuring a roundup of new tools — the WHO’s MiNDBANK database, with documents from 170 countries; ePSIplatform, on open data in the EU & worldwide; new UN report on wastewater; NATO archives expand; and the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names.
There’s been much talk lately about the possibilities offered by new technologies in opening up restrictive regimes and democratizing the production of journalism. Are we living in a Golden Age of Global Muckraking?
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.
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.”
“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!
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.
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for May 29- June 6), including items from DatenBlog, the Tow Center, and the London School of Economics, among others.
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for May 22-30), including items from Spiegel Online, Mole.net, and Harvard Business Review, among others.
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for May 13-23), including items from Open News, IJNet, and the Tow Center, among others.
In December 2012, Poderopedia was launched in Chile to map who is who in business and politics in the country, with the goals of promoting transparency and accountability, and revealing potential conflicts of interest among the most influential political, civic and business leaders, as well as companies and institutions. The platform is now a wealth of information about the powerful in Chile. At this writing, it contains info on 3,107 individuals, 1,398 companies and 812 institutions.
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for May 8-13), including items from Jeune Afrique, Le Monde, and The Guardian, among others. [View the story “Top Ten #ddj: The Week’s Most Popular Data Journalism Links” on Storify]
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for April 17-24), including items from Jeune Afrique, the New York Times, and The Guardian, among others.
As we discussed in part one, you can customise your web browser with ‘add-ons’ and get amazing extra functionality to support your internet research. Chrome and Firefox have the widest variety of add-ons, but some are also available for other browsers. I previously looked at add-ons that help users grab videos and images of web pages, trace the hosting of web servers and download YouTube videos. Here are a few more essentials.
While many people use Internet Explorer to surf the net, users of Firefox and Chrome enjoy a wider range of options when it comes to add-ons. Add-ons are little apps that run inside the browser and allow you some extra functionality. They are usually free and are launched by either clicking on a button or choosing from a right-click menu.
The Verification Handbook is a new resource for journalists and aid responders, with step-by-step guidelines for using using information generated by the public. Although targeted for use during emergencies, the handbook provides useful tips for verifying crowd-sourced information in general. Thanks to the European Journalism Centre, which developed the handbook, for allowing GIJN to publish this excerpt.
As news stories break, journalists find themselves wanting to speak to members of the public. They could have witnessed an incident or may have been affected by an event. Their views count and they enhance our reports with a human angle. There are many ways to locate ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, but we don’t always know how our approaches will be received, or indeed if our messages to them will be read at all. This is where Twitter comes into its own.
There are a lot of websites out there that can help you find hidden information. But there are also software applications and browser plug-ins that can be of use to investigative journalists. Created by up-and-coming developers and enthusiasts on a budget, many of these programmes are rather unsophisticated, so don’t expect slick interfaces and 24-hour help desks. That said, if you can get past the jargon and rough-and-ready feel, you’ll find nifty little apps that can help you discover nuggets of information which would be unavailable through conventional means.
There are the two essential questions a reporter covering business, the economy, or just about any topic should always ask: ‘How much does it cost?’ and ‘Where will you get the money from?’. These simple questions are not only key to gaining information about your current story’s topic, but they offer greater insight into reasons for decisions that have a direct impact on a country and its citizens.
The environment is the overarching issue of the 21st century for two reasons:
1. The environment includes and touches everything: air, water, food, health, climate, energy, development, poverty, economics—the list could go on without end.
2. Nearly every major environmental indicator is in decline.
We are pushing up against the limits of the Earth’s ability to support us. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and nitrogen pollution are moving toward crisis levels, according to recent studies. There is little public awareness of this reality, which means journalists covering the environment have a plethora of important stories to cover.
There are many different concepts and definitions of poverty. According to the Oxford University Poverty and Human Development Initiative, ‘Poverty is often defined by one-dimensional measures, such as income. But no one indicator alone can capture the multiple aspects that constitute poverty. Multidimensional poverty is made up of several factors that constitute poor people’s experience of deprivation–such as poor health, lack of education, inadequate living standard, lack of income (as one of several factors considered), disempowerment, poor quality of work and threat from violence.’
