Quick Tour:Data Journalism

Tony HirstDept of Communication and Systems

The Open UniversityVisiting Senior Research Fellow, University of Lincoln

#ddj

A quick example…

The “Lego” approach to data journalism

Wikipedia HTMLGoogleSpreadsheet=importHTML

CSV Yahoo! PipeImport CSV

KMLGoogle MapEmbedded object <embed>

#ddj in the wild…

Jan 2013

Explanatory visualizationData visualizations that are used to transmit information or a point of view from the designer to the reader. Explanatory visualizations typically have a specific “story” or information that they are intended to transmit.

Exploratory visualizationData visualizations that are used by the designer for self-informative purposes to discover patterns, trends, or sub-problems in a dataset. Exploratory visualizations typically don’t have an already-known story.

DATA helps youFIND the story

DATA helps youTELL the story

BUT first you need to learn how to

listen to the stories that data can tell

… vs. a poll by the Media Standards Trust

Natural Views

ESP #newsrw “folk commonly followed by folk using the #newsrw hashtag at the start of the December 2012 event”

Facebook Likes

http://www.musik-therapie.at/PederHill/Structure&Plot.htm

Triangulation

Processing(.js)

Charts can hide numbers, but

numbers can hide distributions

Numbers & Charts

Another example…

Company

DirectorDirector

DirectorDirector

CompanyCompany

CompanyCompany

So where’s the data?

Digging for data…

“Creating” Data

“Quick Charts”Cut and paste … just add data

datawrapper.de

Plotting Networks

Gephi

ESP #newsrw “folk commonly followed by folk using the #newsrw hashtag at the start of the December 2012 event”

R

( Rstudio )

Google OpenRefine

OpenRefinehttp://mashe.hawksey.info/2012/11/mining-and-openrefineing-jiscmail-a-look-at-oer-discuss/

/via Martin Hawksey/@mhawksey

datajournalismhandbook.org

@psychemedia

blog.ouseful.info