Scrape, Request, Collect, Repeat: How Data Journalists Around the World Transcend Obstacles to Public Data
- 7 November 2022
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis Ltd in Journalism Practice
Abstract
This study applies a typology of public data transparency infrastructure and the contextualism framework for analysing journalism practice to examine patterns in data journalism production. The goal was to identify differences in approaches to acquiring and reporting on data around the world based on comparisons of public data transparency infrastructure. Data journalists from 34 countries were interviewed to understand challenges in data access, strategies used to overcome obstacles, innovation in collaboration, and attitudes about open-data advocacy. Analysis reveals themes of different approaches to journalistic interventionism by overcoming structural obstacles and inventive techniques journalists use to acquire and build their own data sets even in the most restrictive government contexts. Data journalists are increasingly connected with colleagues, third parties, and the public in using data, eschewing notions of competition for collaboration, and using crowdsourcing to address gaps in data. Patterns of direct and indirect activism are highlighted. Results contribute to a better understanding of global data journalism practice by revealing the influence of public data transparency infrastructure as a major factor that constrains or creates opportunities for data journalism practice as a subfield. Findings also broaden the cross-national base of empirical evidence on the developing practices and attitudes of data journalists.Keywords
This publication has 29 references indexed in Scilit:
- Journalism studies still needs to fix Western biasJournalism, 2018
- Freedom of information lessons from India: Collaboration, co-production and rights-based agenda buildingJournalism, 2018
- The Promise of the Transparency CultureJournalism Practice, 2018
- The Universal and the Contextual of Media Systems: Research Design, Epistemology, and the Production of Comparative KnowledgeThe International Journal of Press/Politics, 2018
- How journalists use social media in France and the United States: Analyzing technology use across journalistic fieldsNew Media & Society, 2017
- The datafication of data journalism scholarship: Focal points, methods, and research propositions for the investigation of data-intensive newsworkJournalism, 2017
- Towards an epistemology of data journalism in the devolved nations of the United Kingdom: Changes and continuities in materiality, performativity and reflexivityJournalism, 2017
- Not Partisans, But ParticipantsJournalism Studies, 2016
- MAPPING JOURNALISM CULTURES ACROSS NATIONSJournalism Studies, 2011
- Journalists as interpretive communitiesCritical Studies in Mass Communication, 1993