How to Take Better Images on Your Smartphone

Smartphones have bigger hard drives and more power than some laptops. And while there are millions of apps, many of them used for filming and photography by mobile journalists, Ivo Burum says that the standard features of ordinary smartphones should be mastered first.

Surveillance camera warning

Top 5 Surveillance Investigations of 2021

Investigative journalists went all out last year in covering surveillance issues. From a deep-dive into the dark side of pandemic tech in Singapore’s techno-utopia to an in-depth look at how schools are spending thousands on unreliable “aggression detectors” in the name of student safety, global reporters have been holding Big Tech accountable for its role in fueling authoritarianism worldwide. 

Data Journalism Top 10: Biometric IDs, Data Spaghetti, Eviction Avalanche, Remote Working

With countries around the world considering the safest ways to ease lockdown measures, alongside the deployment of COVID-19 vaccines in many places, some are finding reasons to be optimistic about the end of the coronavirus crisis. But returning to once conventional daily activities, such as going to restaurants and sports stadiums, is still a distant prospect. Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from February 1 to 7 found Voxeurop covering the dangers of adopting biometric IDs and health passports, a look at Europe’s COVID-19 divide by Reuters, an analysis of leaked smartphone data by The New York Times, and a Twitter thread collection of archived data visualizations in various languages.

How The New York Times is Visualizing the Smartphone Tracking Industry

The New York Times’ Privacy Project highlighted the alarmingly unregulated activity of location data companies collecting data from millions of smartphone users. As the coronavirus pandemic sheds further light on the uses and misuses of location tracking, here’s a deeper look at the project that visualized phones being tracked around the US, from the Pentagon and the White House to the streets of San Francisco.