What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from November 5 to November 11 finds employment problems in the UK from @FinancialTimes, Polish data counter-narratives with @gazeta_wyborcza, cool geospatial analysis toys from @Uber, plus the launches of new data labs with @AlterEco_, data articles with @fstalph and @eborgesrey and data newsletters with @voydorg_en.
French independent media website @AlterEco_ has launched its data lab to help the public navigate “the jungle of numbers that saturate the public debate.” The free website features brilliant illustrations, with data on everything from demographic stats of new French MPs to cities with the most @Airbnb ads. (In French.)
‼🎉@Altereco_ lance son « data lab » pour vous aider à vous y retrouver dans la jungle des chiffres qui saturent le débat public https://t.co/VIcyYEb8l0
La plateforme est accessible gratuitement, n'attendez plus ! C'est par ici ➡ https://t.co/LmHCz4U0dG pic.twitter.com/PEjVLPuKca— Alternatives Économiques (@AlterEco_) November 9, 2018
Mind the (Gender) Gap
The UK’s Office for National Statistics (@ONS) published an article, along with the dataset, exploring the commuting patterns of men and women across the country. It turns out that men account for 65 percent of commutes that last longer than an hour. The clean and clear charts from @LauraFHarding and @philleake91 were a hit with data lovers.
Here is some really beautifully presented data on how men and women commute from @LauraFHarding and @philleake91 @ONS.
I particularly love the charts in this one. Simplicity, consistency and with helpful annotations and titles. https://t.co/Mvr1uPNwjE
— Frank Donnarumma (@Frankman1000) November 7, 2018
Polish Counter-Narratives
A Polish watchdog website called out the ruling party @pisorgpl for presenting a distorted narrative of its support in local elections with a #dataviz graph (below). To demonstrate a different perspective, @gazeta_wyborcza‘s Sonar platform built a map of opposition coalitions and individual blocks. Check it out here (in Polish).
🇵🇱 Powiaty, w których wygrało Prawo i Sprawiedliwość. 👍 #WyborySamorządowe2018 #DotrzymujemySłowa pic.twitter.com/I8FetZNp9J
— Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (@pisorgpl) November 6, 2018
Accessibility Viz
People with disabilities should have access to public places and services, according to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which the Dutch government ratified in 2016. Journalists at @oneworldnl put the country’s commitment to accessibility to the test by investigating the Dutch restaurant industry, then used cool graphs to illustrate their findings. (In Dutch.)
Drempels, smalle deuren of wc's die je alleen via een trap kunt bereiken: horecagelegenheden zijn voor veel #rolstoelgebruikers #ontoegankelijk. Hoe kan het anders? OneWorld ging op onderzoek uit. @fleurbubbert @naberacka #toegankelijkheid https://t.co/Iyfh9eq5O6
— oneworldnl (@oneworldnl) November 8, 2018
Uber’s Geospatial Analysis Tool
Twitter was aflutter this week about Kepler.gl, an internal @Uber #dataviz business tool that is now open source. A #GeoCom18 workshop in London about the geospatial analysis tool for large-scale data sets left many data journalists impressed. Thanks to @undertheraedar, you can find sample files from the workshop here.
Particular focus in the @uber talk on the Movement and https://t.co/0fTzxgFmWB public-facing systems for data vis. The former to get insights from Uber trip data; the latter a gro data vis engine in the browser pic.twitter.com/6r8713o6PJ
— Jeremy Morley (@jeremy_morley) November 8, 2018
The Want Ads
With record-low unemployment, and #Brexit looming on the horizon, entire industries in the UK are struggling to fill job vacancies. The @FinancialTimes graphed the sectors facing the biggest labor shortages amid low unemployment, showing that that the industries most affected are hospitality, IT, construction and healthcare.
The five UK sectors grappling with acute labour shortages; amid low unemployment, industries led by hospitality are struggling to hire workers, Gavin Jackson @FT, #economicsfest https://t.co/glopE3aehI
— Romesh Vaitilingam (@econromesh) November 8, 2018
US Elections: Still Counting
US midterm elections may have ended last week, but votes are still being scrutinized and counted — and, in Florida, recounted. For better analyses, @MITelectionlab has shared election returns datasets in various programming languages on its @GitHub page, along with scraping tools and historical data.
Looking for election data? Look no further! We have county-level demographic & past election data up now for use in your #Election2018 analysis: https://t.co/wHVfV9Rdyb
— MIT Election Lab (@MITelectionlab) November 5, 2018
Future of Data Journalism
The adoption of data journalism beyond large newsrooms remains low, despite optimistic predictions. Researcher @fstalph and @eborgesrey, director of the Life in Data research network, looked at data journalism sustainability and the future of data-driven reporting in a recent article, featuring interviews with @emilybell @paulbradshaw @smfrogers @pilhofer @albertocairo @davidherzog @mirkolorenz @Hackette7 @HelenaBengtsson @nicolaskb, and other #ddj pros.
Will #ddj continue to innovate? Three scenarios by @eborgesrey and @fstalph: (1) establishes itself as essential tool for every journo (2) remains niche genre but also spreads to smaller newsrooms (3) gets abandoned by the mainstream media and outsourced to non-legacy actors. https://t.co/ZwaUazCrZn
— Felix Irmer (@fexi) November 7, 2018
Raising a Hand on Special Ed
Education company@Study_INTNL crunched official UK data to reveal a significant drop this year in schools with specialized support for student with special needs — this following a steady increase over the previous three years. Visualized with Flourish, the data also showed that the decline in state-funded facilities did not correspond to a significant decline in special-needs students.
Why SEN Units are declining in state-funded schools in England – a teacher's perspective @GOVUK @educationgovuk #K12 #SEN #education #DDJ https://t.co/qp8OLbzLJh pic.twitter.com/CUZlkXRDxa
— Study International (@Study_INTNL) November 9, 2018
Turkey: Keeping Up with Data News
Istanbul-based Data Literacy Association (@voydorg_en) has launched a weekly data journalism newsletter, and this got data geeks in Turkey pretty excited. The bulletin will include expert tips and interviews, plus the latest conversations in the industry. More here (in Turkish).
Web sayfamız ve forumumuzla yakında yayındayız😍 Ayrıca haftalık veri bültenimize abone olarak #veriokuryazarlığı, #açıkveri, #verigazeteciliği ve #verigörselleştirme gibi alanlarda dünyada meydana gelen gelişmelerden haberdar olabilirsiniz ➡️ https://t.co/VhLEnfyxhh pic.twitter.com/OMATiLi3g4
— VOYD (@voydorg) October 19, 2018
Thanks, once again, to Marc Smith of Connected Action for gathering the links and graphing them.
Kira Zalan is a location-independent freelance journalist, whose work has been published by PRI, Christian Science Monitor, US News & World Report, Atlas Obscura, GIJN and others. She has reported on politics, policy, security, and money laundering — as well as fun topics such as food, travel and culture.
