An introduction to Data Journalism

Data journalism - setting the

stageAnders Pedersen @anpe

@SchoolOfData

Open Knowledge

Open Knowledge is a worldwide non-profit network of people passionate about openness, using advocacy, technology and training to unlock information and enable people to work with it to create and share knowledge.

Evidence is power

School of Data works to empower civil society organizations, journalists and citizens with the skills they need to use data effectively – in their effort to create better societies.

Target audience

We work mostly with change makers: NGOs and journalists.

We empower them to use data effectively to advance their cause and mission through a combination of training and long terms support.

Why School of Data

School of Data is a critical component of the open data ecosystem:

● provides tools and training to empower people to use open data for good - especially to people new to open data;

● supports outreach and engagement by creating a supportive community of learners and mentors - working with Open Knowledge Foundation Local Groups;

● creates opportunities for people and communities to use open data to make an impact;

● works both with governments to open up data and data users such as journalists and NGOs.

Slide name here

● Data expeditions - online and offline short gatherings where a group of people with different backgrounds tackle a data related problem

● Data clinics - hands on support working directly with people’s data● Mentoring - local mentors working with local communities● Online content - tutorial and walkthroughs ● Offline resources e.g. Data Journalism Handbook

Slide name here

● We work globally, with a focus on the following regions: Latin America, Sub Saharan Africa and Middle East, Europe

● School of Data is translated in Spanish and Portuguese● Future: French, Greek and Italian● Over 10 fellows working in countries like: Egypt, Lebanon,

Uganda, Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, etc.

Data Journalism:

Setting the stage

Where do gun owners live?

Complex stories can now be told

Budget information that readers can understand

But be aware of complexity!

How quickly will the ambulance arrive?

Source: http://visualoop.com/media/2012/11/How-fast-is-LAFD-where-you-live-750x298.jpg

Enables you to focus locally

And how about the fire truck?

Fire fighter response times in London

Granularity is king

Tip: the story is almost always buried in granular data

Source: Mapumental

Granularity is king

Who benefits from government subsidies?

Who are benefiting from government contracts?

Source: http://usual-suppliers.pudo.org/

Data journalism is also text mining

● U.K. MP expenses – 700,000 documents in PDF-format

● Wikileaks Iraq war data – 391,832 structured records, each including a text descriptions

● Wikileaks diplomatic cables – 251,287 cables, each a few pages long

● NSA files leaked by Snowden – 50,000 to 200,000 according to the NSA

A text document also contains data

Source: Jonathan Stray, Overview project

Telling clear stories

Where do companies live?

Company ownership networks

Where do people live?

Source: Where nobody lives, http://mapsbynik.tumblr.com/post/82791188950/nobody-lives-here-the-nearly-5-million-census

Demographics: Where nobody lives

Using statistics can help you find stories

Stories in statistics: regression analysis and outliers → test fraud cases

Condition: Machine readable data

Nothing beats a good CSV file

Good data is rarely available

How we often get important data

Government official: “Please receive our annual audit reports in this stack of papers.”

Hard copies = hard work!

Crowd cleaning of data

When data is messy: Readers can assist extracting and cleaning data

Crowd cleaning of data

Readers can annotate documents

Mapping people, power and money

Source: “Who is in charge” created by CIVIO (Spain), http://quienmanda.es/

Mapping relationships

Who are friending who?

What is in a picture? Matching faces to names

Source: vg.no mapping the royal family network in Norway (left), Dirty Energy Money (right)

Connected China

Source: “Who is in charge” created by CIVIO (Spain), http://quienmanda.es/

Data on relationships

Crowd collection of data

Readers can assist collecting data

A clear bar chart is often all you need

Spending: make readers understand

Where to find the data?

The data journalism tool box● Extraction and scraping

○ Tabula○ Scraperwiki○ Online OCR

● Data cleaning○ Open Refine ○ Spreadsheets - yes, you cannot live

without● Visualisation

○ DataWrapper - http://datawrapper.de/○ D3.js - http://d3js.org/

The Data Journalism HandbookSchool of Data

The tools you need

The data journalism tool box● Extraction and scraping

○ Tabula○ Scraperwiki○ Online OCR

● Data cleaning○ Open Refine ○ Spreadsheets - yes, you cannot live

without● Visualisation

○ DataWrapper - http://datawrapper.de/○ D3.js - http://d3js.org/

The Data Journalism HandbookSchool of Data

The tools you need

Mailing lists

Thank you!Stay in touch:

anders.pedersen@okfn.org | schoolofdata@okfn.org @anpe | @SchooOfData