Basic Data Tools for Journalism

what is data journalism? 

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charts, graphics, maps

process of obtaining, understanding, processing, analysing and presenting data

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user friendly data

xls
xlsx
csv
tsv
sps
json
xml
kml
geojson
shp
geotiff
pdf

jpeg

  • search

  • download

  • conversion

  • storage and preparation

  • analysis

  • presentation

  • What is useful/usable/free today, may not be useful/usable/free tomorrow
     

  • Criminal organizations and state agencies are constantly learning
     

  • This is only a collection, there are other tools which can be used for the same purposes
     

  • There is no Swiss knife-like tool, and this is good!
     

  • Many times you have to use different tools for every little step
    ​

  • Google is your friend, and you are not alone - there are hundreds of forums where experts discuss the solutions for specific questions and problems
     

some remarks

search for data

processed data

META GLOBAL SPECIAL MARKET RESEARCH NATIONAL
Google Data UN Global Terrorism DB Kantar Public Procurements
Ourworldindata Worldbank Freedom House Gemius Central Statistical Bureau
Kaggle Eurostat RSF Ipsos MET
Eur Data Portal UNESCO TI TNS Tax Bureau

Earth Engine Data Catalog		 IMF Company Reg Land ownership
NASA OCCRP ALEPH National funds
OECD
Facebook Ad Library

Google Looker Studio
 

manual data collection

“The government announced yesterday that it will build six new stadiums for the next football World Cup. The first, 55,000 seats stadium is to be built in Nowhereham at a cost of €300 million, and the government has contracted Trust Us Ltd. to build it. Construction of the stadium is expected next summer.”

manual data collection

who?
what?
what size?
when?
where?
how much?
with whom?
by when?

manual data collection

manual data collection

date year, H, Q, month, days, hours to seconds
geolocation continent, country, region, county, city, lines, polygons, coordinates
string description - names, qualities, categories
measure whole, fraction, decimal
boolean true/false, yes/no

consistency, accuracy, standards

exact location

wrap up

- Use longform data table instead of wideform. It's much easier to add new data and entries, and you can fit all the data you need in one table.
 

- Make sure the data is clean and consistent. It only takes one misprint to get something wrong.
 

- Pay attention to language settings and spelling differences! Preferably use neutral or very common date, currency and number formats and use them consistently.
 

- Be aware that your database may be used by your colleagues or journalists from other countries. What is obvious to you may not be obvious to others.

download

conversion

storage and preparation

analysis

presentation

 

  • Flourish, Datawrapper, RAWGraphs, PlotDB, Plotly, Highcharts

  • Foursquare.io, QGIS, Mapbox / Google/Google Earth/Timelapse https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse/

  • Aleph VIS, Gephi, Cytoscape, Cosmograph

  • Chrono

  • Knightlab Tools https://knightlab.northwestern.edu/projects/

understanding data

- why the data is available?
- why the data is not available? lack of/missing data = information!
- methodology
- meaning

data

information

knowledge

insight

wisdom

conspiracy

inspiration

 

Sigma Awards

basicdatatools

By Attila Bátorfy

basicdatatools

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