wits dataj intro

Introduction to Data Journalism

Peter Verweij

Wits University

Johannesburg Aug 27

An example: Olympic Rankings

Lessons Official Ranking Other Factors:

Population, GDP, Team

Corrected Ranking

Numbers in Journalism

Writing a story about ICT and Economic development

Internet user In southern Africa

Google Public data

Statistics Matter

Digging deeper Finding Background Official Explanation

Traffic Accidents

From Database: 2000 accidents

Top ten Dangerous junctions Map is the story

What is Data Journalism?

Producing stories truth seeking stories in the public interest without a legal foundation

FROM A PILE OF DATA

Shoot out and licenses

7 dead; 17 wounded Check the licenses What do you want to

know? Methodology:

formulate and hypothesis

Mayors: gender and political party

Appointment of mayors

Formulate your ideas first

Test them of the data Look at the level of

measurement

Finding Data

WHERE: National Bureau for

statistics NGO's Web: find excel Web: tables

HOW: Download Copy-paste scraping

Mother of all Data Journalism

Spreadsheets MS Office: excel Open Office

Ordering data Simple calculations

for key figures Graphs

Visualize!

ManyEyes Fusion Tables Tableau Qgis

Data Journalism: team work and important

IMPORTANT More data More use of data for

policies Check Find hidden trends

TEAM WORK Writer Researcher Hacker Designer

Thank you!

This is the map for Saturday Sept 15.

Peter@d3-media.nl