Data Journalism

GIJN’s Data Journalism Top 10: Democratic Data, Berlin’s Bicycles and Cricket Crazy

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What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from April 16 to 22 finds @camellia_will debating the future of data portals, @DLeonhardt using hard data to show whether Democratic or Republican presidents were more fiscally responsible and @morgenpost mapping bicycle thefts hotspots in Berlin.

The Future of Data Portals

Open data and data portals don’t change the world. Simply putting the data out there isn’t enough, it takes a team of data scientists, designers, developers, subject matter experts, storytellers, project managers and everything in between to make data accessible, usable and useful.

Data for Democrats

New York Times op-ed columnist David Leonhardt points out that Democrats have repeatedly reduced America’s deficit, based on data from the Congressional Budget Office. Since 1977, the three presidential administrations that have overseen deficit increases were all Republican while the three administrations that have overseen deficit reductions were Democratic.

Mapping Bicycle Thefts

Berliner Morgenpost maps bicycle thefts in Berlin and finds the Pankow, Kreuzberg Graefekiez and Friedenau districts the hotspots of stolen bicycles. In 2017, on average, a bicycle disappeared every day in these areas.


Why Data Needs Feminists

A 2015 study found that Google is less likely to show advertisements for highly paid jobs to women than it is to men. These biases can result from flaws in the algorithm itself, or the data it was trained on. Machine learning designer Caroline Sinders is trying to create a more equitable and ethical data collection by starting the Feminist Data Set project.

VisiData: New Open Source Tool

VisiData is an open source multitool for data exploration and manipulation. The software developer who wrote the program calls it “a swiss army chainsaw for data.” There’s a lightning demonstration here.

European Data Journalism Network

The European Data Journalism Network’s editorial coordinator Gian-Paolo Accardo gives an overview on how and why the edjnet was set up and the tools it has developed for journalists and the public.

Open Data?

Journalist SA Mathieson, author of the e-book Britdata, says Britain gets maximum marks for releasing data on the government’s budget, national statistics, administrative boundaries, national maps, air quality and company registers. But the government’s handling of data it does not want to release is disappointing, with security often cited as an excuse.

Cricket Fever

Software developer Pravendra Singh expresses his love for the game of cricket in a piece with multiple interactives, from a historical timeline of test matches performance to the debut age distribution of successful cricket players. As a bonus, there’s also a random team generator to generate your favorite team.

Brazil’s Coast Water Quality

Software developer Álvaro Justen uploaded online datasets from the Institute of Environment and Water Resources of Bahia on water quality on the coast of Bahia in Brazil.

Expanding OCCRP Data

New data sources are constantly being added to data.occrp.org. You’ll be able to find new stuff on Czech companies’ directors and shareholders, UK land prices, data related to the #DaphneProject and #Golden Visas, and more.

Thanks, once again, to Marc Smith of Connected Action for gathering the links and graphing them.

Eunice Au is GIJN’s program coordinator. Previously, she was a Malaysia correspondent for Singapore’s The Straits Times, and a journalist at the New Straits Times. She has also written for The Sun, Malaysian Today and Madam Chair.

For a look at Marc Smith’s mapping on #ddj on Twitter, check out this map.

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