Data Journalism and the Panama Papers: New Horizons for Investigative Journalism in Africa

In the current media ecology, audiences are constantly tempted by many types of content scattered across connected platforms. Since cultural goods consumption is a practice that now takes place in a constant flow across different platforms, news and documentary narratives must take advantage of the malleability of digital language to engage citizens. Narratives change according to the dominant intellectual technology of the time. In this way, oral narratives are different from printed media and the transmedia storytelling that digital communication promotes. DocuMedia: Social Media Journalism is a series of interactive documentaries developed in Argentina at Rosario National University to bring users new narratives of local interest around journalistic research topics. DocuMedia is the result of crossing documentary, investigative journalism, and data journalism techniques with a focus on users’ participation and the expansion of narrative plots. DocuMedia projects are an example of location-based storytelling, that is, a narrative that stems from hyperlocal space and place and operates as a device of constant social reconstruction. In these experiences, memory is understood as the meanings that citizens share and, above all, develop as a social practice, through which identity is expressed and shaped. The fifth DocuMedia project, Women for Sale: Human Trafficking with Sexual Exploitation in Argentina, was launched in 2015 and took on the challenge of making the leap from multimedia journalism to transmedia journalism. The transmedia framework for Women for Sale included a webdoc, or interactive multimedia documentary, a serial graphic novel of five episodes (print and digital version), posters on the street with augmented reality interaction, short videos projected on indoor and outdoor LED screens, television spots, a collaborative map, a television documentary, mobisodes, the e-book What Happens Next? Contributions and Challenges for the Reconstruction of Rights of Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation Victims, and a social media strategy designed to share information about trafficking in Argentina and to call community to action.

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Data Journalism as a Service: Digital Native Data Journalism Expertise and Product Development

Media and Communication ◽

10.17645/mac.v8i2.2757 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 8 (2) ◽

pp. 62-72 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Ester Appelgren ◽

Carl-Gustav Lindén

Keyword(s):

Qualitative Case Study ◽

Digital Native ◽

Investigative Journalism ◽

Types Of Knowledge ◽

Start Up ◽

Data Journalism ◽

Programming Knowledge ◽

External Actors ◽

Start Ups

The combined set of skills needed for producing data journalism (e.g., investigative journalism methods, programming, knowledge in statistics, data management, statistical reporting, and design) challenges the understanding of what competences a journalist needs and the boundaries for the tasks journalists perform. Scholars denote external actors with these types of knowledge as interlopers or actors at the periphery of journalism. In this study, we follow two Swedish digital native data journalism start-ups operating in the Nordics from when they were founded in 2012 to 2019. Although the start-ups have been successful in news journalism over the years and acted as drivers for change in Nordic news innovation, they also have a presence in sectors other than journalism. This qualitative case study, which is based on interviews over time with the start-up founders and a qualitative analysis of blog posts written by the employees at the two start-ups, tells a story of journalists working at the periphery of legacy media, at least temporarily forced to leave journalism behind yet successfully using journalistic thinking outside of journalistic contexts.

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Data-driven reporting: An on-going (r)evolution? An analysis of projects nominated for the Data Journalism Awards 2013–2016

Journalism ◽

10.1177/1464884917735691 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 21 (9) ◽

pp. 1246-1263 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

Wiebke Loosen ◽

Julius Reimer ◽

Fenja De Silva-Schmidt

Keyword(s):

Content Analysis ◽

Gold Standard ◽

Data Sources ◽

Data Driven ◽

Investigative Journalism ◽

Public Data ◽

Data Journalism

Data-driven journalism can be considered as journalism’s response to the datafication of society. To better understand the key components and development of this still young and fast evolving genre, we investigate what the field itself defines as its ‘gold-standard’: projects that were nominated for the Data Journalism Awards from 2013 to 2016 (n = 225). Using a content analysis, we examine, among other aspects, the data sources and types, visualisations, interactive features, topics and producers. Our results demonstrate, for instance, only a few consistent developments over the years and a predominance of political pieces, of projects by newspapers and by investigative journalism organisations, of public data from official institutions as well as a glut of simple visualisations, which in sum echoes a range of general tendencies in data journalism. On the basis of our findings, we evaluate data-driven journalism’s potential for improvement with regard to journalism’s societal functions.

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Evolving data teams: Tensions between organisational structure and professional subculture

Big Data & Society ◽

10.1177/2053951720919964 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

pp. 205395172091996

Author(s):

Florian Stalph

Keyword(s):

Professional Culture ◽

Data Driven ◽

Computer Assisted ◽

Organisational Structure ◽

Data Teams ◽

Investigative Journalism ◽

Data Journalism ◽

Evolving Data

This study explores the integration of data journalism within three European legacy news organisations through the lens of organisational structure and professional culture. Interviews with data journalists and editors suggest that professional routines resonate with established data journalism epistemologies, values, and norms that appear to be constitutional for an inter-organisational data journalism subculture. At the same time, organisational structure either integrates the journalistic subculture by increasing levels of complexity, formalisation, and centralisation or rejects it by not accommodating it structurally or culturally. The three data teams work along epistemologies of computer-assisted reporting, investigative journalism, and data journalism but differentiate themselves through nuanced understandings of data journalism practice, driven by individual journalists. After a structureless episode, one team sets itself apart as it diverges from data-driven routines and orients itself towards technological and interdisciplinary interactive journalism. The findings show an interdependence of individual efforts, varying conceptualisations of data journalism practice, and interplay between organisational structure and professional culture.

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