Basic data tools for journalists
 

data

information

knowledge

insight

wisdom

conspiracy

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user friendly data

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

jpeg

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

types of data

  • 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 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

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
Nasdaq Data Eurostat RSF Ipsos MET
Eur Data Portal UNESCO TI TNS Tax Bureau
IMF Company Reg Land ownership
NASA OCCRP ALEPH National funds
OECD Átlátszó
FB, Twitter

download

  • Google Spreadsheet Importhtml=

  • ​Google Scraper

  • Import.io

conversion

  • PDFTables https://pdftables.com/

  • Tabula https://tabula.technology/

  • Aconvert https://www.aconvert.com/

  • Zamzar https://www.zamzar.com/

  • Mygeodata https://mygeodata.cloud/

storage and preparation

  • Excel

  • Numbers

  • Openrefine https://openrefine.org/download.html

  • Tableau Prep https://www.tableau.com/products/prep/download

analysis

  • Excel

  • Numbers

  • Mysql

  • ​Tableau Public https://public.tableau.com/en-us/s/

  • ​Power BI

  • IBM Watson 

presentation

  • Google Data Studio​

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

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

  • VIS https://github.com/alephdata/datadesktop, Gephi, Cytoscape, Cosmograph

  • Chrono

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

Mapping information - diagrammatic thinking

  • table = visual representation
  • Canva
  • Lucid
  • Gephi
  • Cytoscape
  • VIS Dashboard

Mapping information - chronologic order

  • Chronoflo
  • Sutori
  • Knightlab Timeline

Mapping information - spatial order

  • Google My Maps
  • Google Earth
  • Carto
  • Flourish
  • Kepler/Unfolded
  • ArcGIS Storymap
  • Knightlab Storymap