lincoln journalism research day - data journalism

Data JournalismHaving Conversations with Data

Tony HirstComputing and Communications

The Open University

What is journalism?

[sensemaking]

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amid

What is data?

[a particular type of source]

Data is just another type of

source…

What is data journalism?

Data journalism is investigative

Journalism that uses data as one

of the sources

(We don’t have to produce a map or a chart in the

final piece)

The practice of data journalism

1find stories

2tell stories

1find stories

where’s the data?

what’s the data?

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THE BLOCKERS

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“Data points are just words, but when connected with a squiggly line they tell a story”

Christopher Brown, “Making Sense of Squiggly Lines”, 2011, ISBN 978-0-9832593-1-2

“Conversations with data”

ouseful.info - A Wrangling Example With OpenRefine: Making “Oven Ready Data”

THE BLOCKERS

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Tidying data

Know

Thy

Too

ls…

Data DistributionsIBM Many Eyes

Outliers

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Data can confirm what we think we

know

Data can surprise us and force us to rethink what we think we know

Trends and (anti)correlations...

Data makes most sense

when contextualised

THE BLOCKERS

SkillsBl

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[statistics]

(the art of looking at one number in the context of other numbers)

Asking Questions of Data

Data DistributionsIBM Many Eyes

Outliers

We need to teach people how to ask questions

We need to teach people how to

read charts

SQL

SQL was developed as a

navigational aid

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Reproducibility

2 tell stories

…but that’s another story…

tony.hirst@open.ac.uk

@psychemedia

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