GIJN’s Data Journalism Top 10: World Cup, South Africa’s Pit Toilets and France’s Deadly Police Interventions

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What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from June 11 to 17 finds three data stories about the World Cup from @BBCSport, @FT and @TspLeute, the @guardian looking at how urban cycling can change the world and @Bastamag with 40 years of deaths from police interventions in France.

And the Winner of the World Cup Is …

The BBC has bravely predicted which team will win this year’s World Cup in Russia. By looking at stats and trends from past tournaments it has come up with seven factors that will determine who will win the trophy (or not).

Could This be the Worst Match Ever?

The Financial Times turned to data to answer the burning question: Is Russia vs Saudi Arabia “potentially the worst-quality World Cup opening match ever?”

Berlin: A World Cup in one City

Der Tagespiegel gave the World Cup a local flavor by creating a map that allows you to see the districts in Berlin where people who hail from all the World Cup countries live. It’s sorted by matches, so when Argentina plays Croatia, you can see which districts have the most expats from those two countries.

The Case for Urban Cycling

Cities tend to prioritize car drivers over people who walk, use public transport or cycle. The Guardian has published 12 graphs by urban designer Mikael Colville-Andersen who makes a case for “Copenhagenizing your city.”

France: 478 Deadly Police Interventions

Basta, a French independent journalism site, has made an impressive interactive data story about the number of people who have died in France since 1970 because of interventions by the police.

Data Visualization Catalogue Now in Turkish

Interested in data journalism, but wish there were more visualization tools in languages other than English? Instabul-based journalism lecturer Pınar Dağ has your back. She and a team of helpers have translated a data visualization resource into Turkish.

South Africa’s Dangerous School Toilets

A five-year-old girl died recently when she fell into a pit toilet. Using publicly available data, this story shows that thousands of South Africa’s schools have potentially dangerous toilets.

Tips on How to Avoid Statistical Pitfalls

Do you know the difference between percent and percentage points? No? Fear not! Maarten Lambrecht made slides to help you avoid common mistakes with data.

Data Visualization as Art

Information designer Frederica Fragapane’s visualizations are being exhibited at the Wild Mazzini data art gallery in Turin until July 8.

Graphics: A Daily Roundup

For people interested in what the data journalism community is up to, London-based Warning: Graphic Content publishes a daily roundup of links to data viz, data journalism and open data.


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

Laura Grant is filling in for GIJN’s Eunice Au, while she is on leave. She is a managing partner of the Media Hack Collective, a Johannesburg-based digital journalism initiative, where she works on data-driven journalism projects. She is the former associate editor of digital and data projects at the Mail & Guardian and teaches digital journalism at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

Full disclosure: Laura Grant and Alastair Otter, GIJN’s IT coordinator, produced South Africa’s Dangerous School Toilets story that features on this week’s top-10 list. The fact that it made the list is entirely coincidence.

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

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