39 - Data Journalism’s Ties With Civic Tech

Summary

Abstract

How data journalism overlaps with other forms of data work and data culture.

Keywords: civic tech, gatekeeping, professional boundaries, data journalism, freedom of information (FOI), databases

While computer-assisted reporting was considered a practice exclusive to (investigative) journalists, data journalism is characterized by its entanglements with the technology sector and other forms of data work and data culture. Compared to computer-assisted reporting, the emergence of data journalism in the United States and in Europe intersected with several developments both within and outside newsrooms. These include: The growing availability of data online, not least due to open data initiatives and leaks; newsrooms hiring developers and integrating them within the editorial team to better cope with data and provide interactive web applications; and the emergence of various “tech for good” movements that are attracted to journalism as a way to use their technological skills for a “public good.” This has contributed to an influx of technologists into newsrooms ever since data journalism emerged and became popular in the 2000s in the West and elsewhere. However, the resulting entanglements between data journalists and other forms of data work are distinct in different regions. Moreover, data journalism is connected to new, entrepreneurial forms of journalism that have emerged in response to the continued struggle of media organizations to develop sustainable business models. These new types of media organizations, for example, non-profit newsrooms like ProPublica or venture-backed news start-ups like BuzzFeed, tend to question traditional boundaries of journalism in their aspiration to “revive” or “improve” journalism, and technology and data often play a key role in these efforts (see Usher, 2017; Wagemans et al., 2019).

The entanglements between data journalism and other forms of data work and data cultures create new dependencies, but also new synergies that enable new forms of collaboration across sectors. Here I want to use the close relationship between data journalism and civic tech as an example because in many places both phenomena emerged around the same time and mutually shaped each other from an early stage. Civic tech is about the development of tools that aim to empower citizens by making it easier for them to engage with their governments or to hold them accountable.