According to Bruno Breton, CEO of Bloom Analytics, "the future of information is data journalism". Today, anyone can access an astronomical amount of data disseminated by governments and public institutions. Data Journalists can exploit this data and bring important information to the surface, in the manner of the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal.
Before looking at this example and the various consequences of this influx of data on the world of journalism, the question we need to ask ourselves is:
What is data journalism, what advantages does it offer and what are its challenges?
Tomorrow’s journalist will need to master the tools of data analysis. On social networks, important events leave various traces, in other words, data. Data that data journalists need to track down and analyze, to make the most of these significant events and decipher current events.
Once collected and analyzed, the data reveals the phenomena and forces influencing the events at play. Thanks to the computational power of data tools and the very nature of data analysis, we now have access to precise, predictive journalism that identifies and highlights the links between cause and effect.
Another benefit of data journalism is better information transmission. With a solid grounding in data visualization and storytelling, the data journalist conveys information in the most pedagogical way possible, with clear reports and visuals that include the key data on the subject.
Hans Rosling’s speeches on visualizing global poverty with Gapminder, seen millions of times on platforms, are a good example of this pedagogical aspect.
By analyzing the data linked to their content and its impact on the public, data journalists are in the best position to analyze the communities they reach and their characteristics, so they can act accordingly and modify their content to achieve their objectives: strengthening and building audience loyalty, reaching the right audience, transmitting their message. This is enlightened journalism.
Regaining control of expertise
According to Sylvain Lapoix, data journalist, co-author of the DataGueule program and professor of data journalism at Paris-Dauphine University, “One of the big problems with journalism in general is the outsourcing of expertise.” The journalist who has to do a story on water pollution in the Tigris Delta is going to find out and talk to biologists and specialists there.
Where data journalism creates a breach is that, with the retrieval and analysis of this data, the data journalist can free himself from this dependence on experts and reveal for himself the key trends and phenomena that lie behind everyday facts.
The stakes surrounding data journalism are many: the hunt for fake news and fact-checking, the disappearance of paper media and the management of open data are all burning issues to be dealt with in the years to come. Fact-checking is a tool for fighting back against the rise of fake news, which is generated on an almost industrial scale.
Open data is the provision of data at the request of citizens, not the selection of data for communication by administrations. For example, the French government makes over 350,000 datasets available to all on its website.
Data journalism is the result of various changes in society and advances in data technology. By exploiting and analyzing data, data journalists gain access to higher levels of understanding without being experts in the field they are dealing with.
Finally, by taking the data they process into their own hands, data journalists are in control of their content and objectives. For more information, and to get an idea of what data journalism is all about, you can visit the DataGueule channel, whose videos are very interesting!
What’s more, if you’d like to learn the data visualization and data analysis skills used by data journalists, take a look at our Data Analyst training course on our website.
The challenges of data journalism
The stakes surrounding data journalism are many: the hunt for fake news and fact-checking, the disappearance of paper media, and the management of open data are all burning issues to be dealt with in the years to come. Fact-checking is a tool for fighting back against the rise of fake news, which is generated on an almost industrial scale. Open data is the provision of data at the request of citizens, not the selection of data for communication by administrations. For example, the French government makes over 350,000 datasets available to all on its website.
Data journalism is the result of various changes in society and advances in data technology. By exploiting and analyzing data, data journalists gain access to higher levels of understanding without being experts in the field they are dealing with.
Finally, by taking the data they process into their own hands, data journalists are in control of their content and objectives. For more information, and to get an idea of what data journalism is all about, you can visit the DataGueule channel, whose videos are very interesting!
What’s more, if you’d like to learn the data visualization and data analysis skills used by data journalists, take a look at our Data Analyst training course on our website.
