wits dj lecture

DATA JOURNALISM

Peter VerweijWits University Johannesburg

Sept 2012

The end of news and journalismThe Economist and DNR

Are social media killing news?

News breaks on Twitter first

Twitter as the alarm bell of journalism

Example TK1951 of Amsterdam airport

But this is not the end of quality reporting: data journalism

Some examples of Data Journalism

Olympics and the ranking

Including: population, GDP, team

Guardian

Examples 2

Traffic accidents Download data Top ten Put them on the map

Examples 3

Classic Hurricane Andrew

What is Data Journalism?

Finding stories In the public interest Without a legal

foundation From a pile of data

IT IS THE STORY NOT THE DATA

How do you do it?

Get the data from NBS, NGO: download or copy paste

Search web for xls Scrape data Pdf to cvs and xls Analyze: excel or R Visualize: manyeyes,

tableau, qgis

From NL to ZA

SA parliament data NL parliament data And here is my map

Data journalism is:

TEAMWORK: Writer Researcher/

statistician Hacker Designer

QUALITY JOURNALISM

Nick Davies – Flat Earth News – churnalism

Checking is the justification of our profession

50 years old

Introducing computers to journalism

Philip Meyer and the Detriots Riots

And the London Riots

Names of the beast: precision, analytical, car, ddj

Zoom in: tools of science

Ch Wright Mills: Power Elite

Social network analysis

Connections Mathematics: walks Tools: NodeXL or

Gehi Twitter: journalists

and MP's

Conclusion

New Possibilities for reporting; new jobs; improve the weak position of the media

Check and review the use of power

Update your knowledge and skills

Thank you!

peter@d3-media.nl