Data Journalism: a new face in the journalist’s job market
From Gutenberg’s press to the internet, journalism has always had to reinvent itself along with advances in the media in order to keep informing people in the best possible way. But of them all, the Internet has played a major role in the professional practice of journalists. That is because it is everywhere, no longer confined to the computer.
Thus, nowadays, thanks to its easy access, the flow of information has grown and become faster, renewing journalistic work and the dynamics that used to be performed by print media (newspapers and magazines), radio, and television.
Here we will talk about Data Journalism, a recently discovered field that has been growing more and more and offers new narrative possibilities within this vast sea of information.
First of all…. What is Data?
Did you know that we can say everything around us is Data? Well, yes… It is possible to say so — we just need to assign meaning to things. A practical example is taking a diverse set of pens and categorizing them. Each one will then have different attributes, such as color, size, thickness, etc. — that is, a different piece of data in each category.
Okay! But what does that have to do with the Internet? How is it applied? Am I in the middle of this?
When, for example, you sign up for a social network or search for something in your browser, shop online, or write a text, all of this generates Data. It comes both from us, ordinary users, and from the websites, blogs, portals, companies, and services we access — resulting in a larger amount of data every day, at a very fast pace.
To give you an idea, according to a Cisco Systems survey, in 2016 it was estimated that Data traffic had surpassed the Zettabyte (one sextillion bytes), and in 2018 it was calculated that this estimate would reach 19.5 ZB by 2021. This huge volume of data, combined with the speed at which it circulates and its variety, is what we call Big Data.
Information extraction: journalism on the data trail
Journalism found in Big Data a new possibility for creating narratives. The raw data scattered across the internet could become a source of information, but for that, an entire process was needed to refine it until it became understandable to the public. This new reality allowed journalists to enter a new trail, from which yet another field of work emerged: Data Journalism.
Professionals in this field deal with three important stages in the development of their work: the search; the analysis; and the dissemination of the content. Let’s understand a bit about each one?
Search - Walking through the mining grounds: At this stage, the journalist goes ‘hunting’ for data. Within this process, they may or may not have a defined agenda; either way, it is the first step toward reflecting on the content they want to work on. Some of the data can be found through Google command techniques, visits to websites and services with databases on the Internet, Freedom of Information laws (such as Brazil’s LAI), and even through programming.
Analysis - I found a shining rock: This is when the story begins to take shape. After acquiring the data, the journalist needs to understand it — a task that requires caution. The professional may come across calculations that lead to a story, as well as find patterns within the research. At this stage, it is important to make sure the analyses are actually correct, which is why it is important to reach out to sources or professionals related to the subject.
Dissemination - It’s a precious one!: Now that almost everything is ready, the journalist needs to publish this information. There are many ways to present data to the public: a story, infographics, charts, news reports, and interactive web applications.
Data Journalism in practice
To better understand how this work is done in practice, we will present here three important journalistic projects that make use of data.
Monitor da Violência Created in 2018, “Monitor da Violência” is a project by G1 in partnership with USP’s Violence Studies Center (Núcleo de Estudos da Violência) and the Brazilian Public Security Forum. Its goal is to monthly map the rates of violent deaths in each Brazilian state, counting victims of lethal and intentional violent crimes, such as intentional homicide, robbery-homicide, and bodily injury followed by death. With this data, the monitor produces analyses and reports focused on public security, in addition to maintaining an interactive infographic of the mapping.
Volt Data Lab It is a journalism agency born in late 2014, focused on data investigation, analysis, and visualization, with projects in several areas such as politics, economics, human rights, media, and technology. Volt has already produced important surveys such as the “Atlas da NotÃcia”, which seeks to map journalism ventures across Brazil. Together with Poder360, it developed a project that shows information on all political candidacies in elections since 1998. It also performed data analysis for a BBC report on the increase in seizures of handmade submachine guns in the country in recent years.
Nexo is a digital newspaper, launched in November 2015. It has a section dedicated solely to charts on the most varied topics. There is no accompanying text for the subject, but they manage to create a narrative through the numbers, which makes it easier for the audience to understand.
